I´ve covered this before, but opinion polls supposedly suggest that most Trump/MAGA supporters are in favor of Operation Epic Fury. The number of MAGA Republicans who support the war is much larger than the number of non-MAGA Republicans who do so. This is true both in percentages and in absolute numbers. Only 3% of Republicans identify clearly as both MAGA and anti-war. From this, some gadflies conclude that there isn´t a "split in MAGA" over the Iran war. It´s all sound and (non-epic) fury from the legacy media, signifying nothing.
However, there seems to be a problem with the relevant polls.
Those who self-identify as MAGA usually take that to mean "100% support for Trump". The label is ideologically empty and is used to express extreme trust in the person of Donald J Trump. Those who oppose the Iran war will probably not identify as MAGA for that very reason. But this skews the result. If "MAGA" just means "I love Trump", then almost *by definition* MAGAs will be much less likely to oppose Trump´s policies on any issue.
The writer of the first article linked below believe that the midterm elections *will* cause trouble for Trump since many new Trump voters in 2024 were independents and are likely to switch their allegiance (many of these might be opposed to the war or dissatisifed for other reasons). However, he believes that this isn´t the same thing as a major split in MAGA, since the MAGAs who are "Trumpier than Trump" (Steven Bannon, Tucker Carlson, MTG) command very little support.
I can´t help wondering if political commentators are simply talking pass each other. They have different definitions of what "MAGA" is supposed to be. The ideologically orthodox populists may be a minuscule group and perhaps nobody outside their circles gives a damn about what Bannon is saying, but if a larger group of independents leave the "MAGA coalition" (in the broader sense), Trump is in trouble anyway! And that´s true even if this particular group is smaller than the MAGA cultists for whom Trump simply can do nothing wrong. Elections can be decided by a few swing voters...
Another interesting finding (second link) is that 26% of Republican voters believe that Trump started the Iran war to distract from the Epstein files, while a whopping 81% of Democrats think so.
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