Republicans are slamming “woke” mobs and corporations, but a new poll says that Americans don’t always see the ill-defined term as a bad one.
The USA Today/Ipsos poll found 56% of those surveyed believed “woke” means to be “informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices,” including three-quarters of Democrats over a third of Republicans.
Just under four in 10 persons — 39% — aligned themselves with the typical GOP definition, which is “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words,” the pollsters said. More than half of Republicans, or 56%, feel this way about the term.
Independents, 51%-45%, say persons who are “woke” are aware of social injustice as opposed to being overly politically correct, raising questions about the Republican strategy of deploying the term against Democratic rivals.
“Most Americans understand that to be woke is to be tuned in to injustices around us,” pollster Cliff Young, of Ipsos, told USA Today. “But for a key segment of Republicans who make up the Trump-DeSantis base, ‘woke’ is a clear trigger for the worst of the politically correct, emerging multicultural majority.”
The term appears frequently online, in the media and in the halls of Congress, but its meaning has evolved over time and isn’t crystal clear.
Black Americans used it long ago to describe the need to wake up to racial oppression, though it was attached in the past decade to lingering concerns about a legacy of systematic oppression and discrimination after the police-involved killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, according to a USA Today timeline.
Former President Donald Trump has bemoaned President Biden’s “woke takeover” of the federal government while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, has vowed to “never surrender to the woke mob.”
It could be good politics in the looming GOP primary. Republicans by a 60%-14% margin say being described as “woke” would be an insult and not a compliment, the poll said.
Independents tend to see it as an insult, 42% to 32%, while Democrats, 46%-25%, tend to say it would be a compliment.
The USA TODAY/Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 adults was conducted Friday through Sunday and had a margin of error of 3.3 points.
