Americans are divided on ‘culture war’ issues, a new CNN poll finds. Republicans are trying to leverage that in the midterms

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, Patrick Svitek, Katie Doran, CNN

(CNN) — In the years before he ran for US Senate, James Talarico said there were six sexes, declared that “God is nonbinary” and deemed it “existential” for Americans to reduce their meat consumption to combat climate change.

As Republicans have assailed him over those comments, calling them “woke,” the Texas state representative is now distancing himself from some of the remarks, calling them “cringey.”

These aren’t necessarily the issues at the top of most Americans’ minds: As a wealth of polling this year has shown, that issue would be the economy. But across the country, Republican candidates are bombarding voters with ads about fighting the “woke” left – or accusing their opponents of failing to do so. Republicans are especially galvanized against Talarico and eager to make him a vulnerability for Democrats beyond Texas.

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS suggests the public is sharply divided over the broad contours of the so-called culture war. Just shy of half of Americans think society has gone too far in its acceptance of different cultures, gender identities, sexual orientations and backgrounds, while a little over half reject that characterization.

Over the past year, Republicans and independents have grown more likely to say that society’s level of acceptance has gone too far, driving the overall share of the public who takes that view up 6 points from last summer. Close to eight in 10 Republicans now say they feel that way, as do 47% of political independents.

“Things you’d never think twice about saying 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago, now people are suddenly saying, ‘Oh you can’t say that,’” said Ed Shedlock, a Republican from Louisiana who took the survey. “Some people will cancel people for something so insignificant it’s not even worth having a conversation with them.”

Asked to choose the bigger social problem these days – people having to be too careful about what they say, or people feeling too comfortable making offensive statements – Americans are about evenly split.

Other divides are more lopsided. Only about one-third of Americans think the country would be improved by a return to 1950s ideals about traditional gender roles. Another 45% say it would be worse – up from 34% in 1997, a shift that’s mostly due to a growing consensus among American women.

How Republican primaries are being shaped

These issues have been particularly potent within GOP primaries, where politicians face an electorate largely primed for a backlash against cultural acceptance. Nationally, President Donald Trump’s administration made efforts to roll back diversity initiatives an early and prominent tentpole of his second term.

Ahead of the June 23 Republican runoff for South Carolina governor, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette has invoked the “woke mob” in ads highlighting how she was disinvited from speaking at South Carolina State University after student protests.

“I’ll make sure that if liberal institutions cancel conservatives, we cancel their funding,” she says in the ads. “I’m Pamela Evette, and the woke mob will get nothing – and take nothing – from us.”

In Nevada, the recent winner of a GOP primary for an open House seat, David Flippo, aired ads against his main competitor, James Settelmeyer, accusing him of being a “woke liberal pretending to be a Republican.” The commercial cites a number of votes Settelmeyer cast as a state senator.

In Texas, Talarico is already facing GOP ads highlighting his past comments on social issues. He said in CBS News interview last month that some of his statements “missed the mark” but accused his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, of “intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from” his own political vulnerabilities.

Democrats take a different tack

Across the aisle, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents hold a different view in the CNN poll, saying, 60% to 18%, that rather than going too far in its acceptance, society hasn’t gone far enough.

“The best part about being an American is that we stand up for each other,” said Danny Minaya, a Democrat living in New York who said that societal acceptance hadn’t gone far enough. “You fight for the little guy, you stand up for the person that’s being shitted on, you stand up for the person that needs their rights protected. Right now, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing that.”

There are, however, some divides within the party. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, women are 8 points likelier than men to see an issue with offensive speech and 14 points likelier to say that society hasn’t gone far enough in accepting differences on culture, gender identity and sexual orientations – though majorities among both genders hold those views.

Democratic-aligned Whites are 20 points likelier than Democratic-aligned people of color to say that societal acceptance hasn’t gone far enough, and about 24 points likelier to say that a return to 1950s gender roles would make the country worse. There are similar divides between college graduates and those without degrees.

At the heart of the debate over “wokeness” is a period of time beginning around 2019 when Democrats moved to the left in their rhetoric and positions as a crowded field competed for their party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in the next year’s election.

One of those candidates was then-California Sen. Kamala Harris, who said in a 2019 questionnaire for a civil rights group that she supported gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners. When she emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee five years later, Trump’s campaign seized on the questionnaire answer in ads that declared, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

Jackie Frank, a lifelong Democrat living in Florida who took the survey, credits those types of attacks for helping Trump win the presidency, and giving Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis the win in her state.

“I grew up in a time when there was a flip in the switch about being very careful about how you address people and the things that you said, and then the pendulum swung to ‘woke’ being a bad word” among Republicans, she said.

Views on whether race and gender are advantages

Most men and White Americans reject the idea that they’ve seen advantages in their lives from being born into those demographics. But few feel as though they’ve been the targets of discrimination themselves: Just 8% of White Americans say that their race has been a disadvantage in their lives, and only 1 in 10 men say their gender has been a disadvantage.

White Americans who align with the Democratic Party are three times as likely as those aligned with the GOP, 72% to 24%, to say that their race has been an advantage in their lives. Democratic-aligned people of color are likelier than those aligned with the GOP, 51% to 30%, to say their race has been a disadvantage.

There’s a similar pattern on gender: 49% of Democratic-aligned men, compared with 22% of Republican-aligned men, say their gender has been an advantage in life; 48% of Democratic-aligned women, compared with 23% of Republican-aligned women, feel that their gender has been a disadvantage.

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The CNN poll was conducted among 2,480 adults nationwide by SSRS from May 7-31, using a combination of online and telephone interviews. The survey samples were originally drawn from two sources – an address-based sample and a random-digit dial sample of prepaid cell phone numbers – and combined. Respondents were contacted by mail, phone or text. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.