Americans broadly agree on what’s “woke,” but partisan cues still shape perceptions

A new study published in Research and Politics provides insight into how Americans conceptualize the term “woke.” While Democrats, Republicans, and Independents tend to agree on many of the attributes associated with being woke, the study found that partisanship shapes which issues, identities, and policies people associate with the label.

Although “woke” has become a widely used political term—especially in conservative media and Republican rhetoric—there remains little clarity about what the average person actually thinks it means. Originally used by Black civil rights activists to encourage vigilance against racial injustice, the term later gained traction in the 2010s during protests against police brutality. But as its popularity grew, so did its ambiguity. Over time, “woke” shifted from signifying a commitment to social justice to being used by the political right as a vague pejorative encompassing a range of progressive causes and behaviors.

The researchers aimed to explore whether this rhetorical evolution has altered how people across the political spectrum perceive the term. Specifically, they asked: What does the American public consider to be “woke”? And do definitions differ between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents?

To investigate public perceptions of wokeness, the researchers conducted a conjoint survey experiment. They recruited 1,126 participants living in the United States through Lucid/Cint, a platform that provides samples designed to reflect U.S. demographics in terms of age, gender, and race. While not a probability sample, this approach is commonly used in political science experiments to identify opinion patterns.

Each participant was shown two lists of items across five trials. The items included political parties, racial and gender identities, professions, products, policies, and public figures—many of which have been described as “woke” in recent media coverage. The task was simple: choose which of the two lists was more “woke,” based on the participant’s own understanding of the term. Across all trials, this yielded over 11,000 individual responses.

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The researchers deliberately included both items clearly associated with progressive causes—such as Black Lives Matter or pro-choice policies—and items with weaker or more ambiguous ties to wokeness, such as professions, consumer products, and higher education institutions.

In addition to the main experiment, participants were also asked questions measuring authoritarian attitudes, such as support for rule-breaking leaders or political violence. These items were used to explore how broader ideological orientations might influence perceptions of wokeness.

The study found that certain items were broadly perceived as “woke” across the political spectrum. These included Democratic Party identifiers, transgender people, lesbian identities, Black Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and pro-choice policies. Items that were consistently viewed as anti-woke included the Republican Party, straight men, Donald Trump, book bans, the Proud Boys, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Interestingly, not every political figure fell clearly on either side of the spectrum. For example, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Ron DeSantis, and Matt Gaetz were all perceived as relatively neutral, despite their strong affiliations with their respective parties. Similarly, high-profile right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty and Antifa were not reliably seen as either woke or anti-woke by respondents.

When the researchers examined responses by political affiliation, they found that partisanship played a defining role in how participants judged what was woke. For Republican respondents, items associated with the Democratic Party—regardless of their racial or gender content—were more likely to be seen as woke. Democratic respondents, on the other hand, tended to associate wokeness more with items that represented progressivism on race and gender issues.

For instance, Democrats were more likely to say that profiles containing Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, or feminist identifiers were woke. Republicans, by contrast, focused more on party cues. They were more likely to say something was woke if it included prominent Democrats or policies aligned with liberal values.

Independents offered a mixed picture. They were somewhat more likely to agree with Democrats when it came to gender progressivism but showed less consistency overall. Their views seemed to borrow selectively from both partisan frameworks.

Another layer of analysis revealed subtle but telling gender dynamics. Republican respondents often associated women and female political figures—especially Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—with wokeness, while not extending the same judgment to male Democratic figures like Joe Biden. Gender-oriented causes and groups were often more strongly linked to wokeness among Republican and Independent respondents than racial topics were. This suggests that opposition to gender progressivism may be a more potent trigger for anti-woke sentiment on the political right.

The results tend to support the idea that the term “woke” has experienced significant conceptual stretching. Once focused on racial injustice, the term now appears to operate as a general label for progressive ideas and identities, particularly those associated with the Democratic Party.

But the researchers caution that their forced-choice design may not perfectly reflect how people think about wokeness in real-world settings. Participants had to choose one list as more woke, even if both seemed equally woke—or not woke at all—to them. This may have pushed some respondents toward making artificial distinctions. Future studies could explore more open-ended or nuanced approaches to understanding how people define the term.

The study, “What’s woke? Ordinary Americans’ understandings of wokeness,” was authored by Benjamin M. VanDreew, Joseph B. Phillips, B. Kal Munis, and Spencer Goidel.