The 2026 midterms show that economic concerns have overtaken anti-CRT, DEI and “woke” culture-war politics, though the divisions they created remain deeply embedded in American society.
Today’s midterm elections offer an opportunity to take stock of the political legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency and the changing priorities of the American electorate.
Some Republican candidates are already subtly distancing themselves from Trump himself. Issues that were used as reliable rallying cries in the 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm elections are much muted and fewer people are listening. Are the hot-button topics of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), only recently wielded with such impact, still framing elections? Can reading the midterm tea leaves offer us an insight into the future of such divisive cultural politics in the United States?
Donald Trump has called CRT ‘a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue’. He and supporters have characterised it as ‘racist’, ‘Marxist’, ‘divisive’ and ‘un-American’ propaganda delivered through DEI programmes, including in police and military training courses and in universities that teach about race and American history. Framing CRT and DEI as un-American ideologies that raise and attack the concept of White privilege in society and diminish the celebratory narrative of American freedom was a potent weapon for Republicans in previous elections. The political and cultural flashpoints created an energy that morphed into shorthand for attacks on ‘wokery’, an elastic term used to deride everything from Black Lives Matter to transgender rights, and from teaching about slavery in schools to pulling down statues of Confederate soldiers or Christopher Columbus.
The conservative backlash to DEI, CRT and ‘wokery’, fuelled by right-wing media, energised conservative voter communities and proved effective in mobilising and uniting interest groups, who espoused ‘traditional’ American values and the idea that the nation should rest on meritocracy. It was foundational to Trump’s second administration. Trump leveraged a string of executive orders and federal directives, and whipped up public campaigns to dismantle the architecture of DEI policies built over decades of civil rights reforms, proclaiming ‘our country will be woke no longer’. Many federal DEI programmes were ended soon after his re-election, and strict gender-definition policies imposed in the military. Anything deemed to be CRT or ‘radical gender ideology’ was banned in schools, school boards became spaces of political tension over curricula, and universities were threatened with withdrawal of federal funding if they continued with race- or sex-conscious admissions policies or hiring practices. The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, was found to have systematically trawled through federal grants, slashing funding to those featuring specific keywords believed to signal ‘radical and wasteful DEI programs’ including ‘woman’, ‘gender’, ‘bias’, ‘trans’, ‘LGBTQ’, ‘BIPOC’, ‘Black’ and ‘tribal’.
Identifying a position opposed to CRT, DEI and, by extension, ‘wokery’ has been used to conjure and intensify the culture wars in recent years. But to what extent are the culture wars still a theme that can be reliably utilised in 2026 midterms taking place in an economic and political landscape that is significantly redrawn?
The idea that the United States is in a perpetual ideological struggle of self-definition was popularised in James Davison Hunter’s 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. According to Hunter, competing moral visions over the meaning of America rooted in the 1960s’ ‘silent majority’ counterculture divide factionalise around issues that serve as important markers of identity and voting allegiance. Evoked and stoked by politicians who reap the rewards from the messy and chaotic fallout, wedge issues essentially coalesce into opposing ideological visions over the future of the nation, with both sides perceiving the other as an existential threat to the America they know and imagine.
Americans’ ongoing search for the meaning and idea of what the United States was, is and should be has fuelled a culture war over emotive and emergent issues that dominate the political agenda each election. Republicans’ success in the 2022 midterms owed, in no small measure, to their success in mobilising voters in opposition to CRT, DEI and ‘wokeness’, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (Florida) linking ‘wokeness’ to supposed efforts to delegitimise history and political institutions, and tear up the fabric of ‘our society and culture’.
In the 2026 midterms, though, a deafening silence attends the political future of DEI, CRT and ‘wokeness’. Republicans and Democrats have largely circumvented culture war rhetoric as they aim to reassure voters that they understand their concerns are, as they were in 1992, about the ‘economy, stupid’. Playing politics with CRT, DEI and ‘wokeness’ will not decide this election: grocery stores, gas station forecourts and homes are where they need to meet voters and their concerns over the affordability of groceries, gas and utilities.
The economy is the single most important issue on the minds of registered voters (84 per cent) according to a Pew Research poll, with the future of democracy second (73 per cent), and more of a concern among registered Democrats than Republicans (85 to 73 per cent, respectively). Among Democrats, the cost of living and economic conditions have surged in importance as voting priorities since the 2022 midterms, with immigration and foreign policy also rising by 17 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. By contrast, immigration and foreign policy have become less important to Republicans, falling by 4 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively. Nevertheless, immigration remains a particularly important issue for Republican voters, ranking second only to the economy and ahead of the future of democracy.
Compared to 2022, Democrats more than Republicans (52 to 18 per cent respectively) have identified issues around race and ethnicity as a voting priority, though less important than healthcare, education and even investigations into Trump.
The scars of the frenzied chapter of the culture wars that orbited around anti-CRT, anti-DEI and anti-wokery have not healed. As Americans vote today, the issues that to such an extent framed the previous midterms are certainly not as visible, but the divisions caused by the issues have been etched deeply into the political landscape. While the economy and the cost of living eclipse and climb to the peak of voter priorities, the way in which anti-CRT/DEI/wokery was framed as a core issue of American identity means that it will continue to emerge as a key axis of tension and division for years to come.
Shaun Wallace is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Bristol. His latest book is In Pursuit of Freedom: Fugitive Slaves and Advertised Escape in the Early Republic.
Sam Hitchmough is Associate Professor of History at the University of Bristol. His latest book is Rethinking the Red Power Movement.
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