Finally, A Motherlode of Data About Who Supports the MAHA Movement

On today's episode, we spoke with Erica Seifert, a pollster & senior director with Navigator Research. We asked friend of the pod and MAHA supporter Aaron Everitt to join.

“I’ve been a pollster for almost 20 years. These numbers blew my mind.” - Erica Seifert, senior director, Navigator Research

We often hear that MAHA is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Maybe so.

But there was a time, long ago, when Americans were furious and suspicious about what was in their food, their medicines, the air they breathed, the water they drank. A time of social uprising against corporations that had monopolies and had captured government, and put profits over the health and safety of the people.

We’re talking about the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century.

It’s by no means a perfect analogy, but Progressives, like MAHA today, fought for reforms to make food safer, medicines and drugs pure and accurately labeled, all while taking on corporate influence and monopolies.

(Image courtesy of AFP)

The lessons of the Progressive Era came up in our latest episode, while speaking with Erica Seifert of Navigator Research. Navigator just released a new poll all about MAHA.

Listen to our episode here:

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Through a series of questions, they concluded that 55% of Americans today are either MAHA “loyalists” (11%), which is your hardcore followers, or MAHA “curious” (44%), those agreeing with several of the principles are but not especially political.

(KFF recently came out with a poll that found 43% of Americans say they consider themselves “supporters” of MAHA.)

So, no matter which number strikes your fancy – 43% or 55% – either close to or just over half of Americans are interested in or very supportive of the MAHA movement.

So what’s driving Americans to MAHA?

This is where things got even more interesting. Despite how much attention vaccines stir up, the top pathway into the MAHA “curious” camp, Erica explained, was through the movement’s messaging on food.

“The entry point for these folks is food. This is how a lot of them got into it — food policy. They’re like, ‘There’s something going on here, and it’s not right.’ And once that door opened, they got into a lot of other things. But when you exclude strong partisans, vaccines were not really the entry point for these folks.”

(WSITY Team, Aaron Everitt, and Erica Seifert)

Joining the conversation was a friend of the podcast, Aaron Everitt. Aaron is a video journalist, substacker for Besides the Revolution and a writer for prominent MAHA influencer Jessica Reed Kraus’ newsletter House InHabit. Aaron is a MAHA supporter and a former Kennedy campaign volunteer.

He concurred that the gateway to the movement is food.

“100%. I think that’s exactly where most people start in this conversation. They can’t help but look down at their waistlines and go, ‘What happened to me?’”

The Navigator poll showed that, by and large, support for vaccines is holding across the political spectrum.

Sixty-three percent of Americans oppose banning the COVID vaccine, compared with 26% who support a ban. MAHA “curious” respondents oppose banning the vaccines.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose ending all vaccine mandates, including in public schools, while 31% support ending them. Again, the MAHA “curious” opposed ending the mandates.

But remember — we said Americans by and large support vaccines.

More than half of the MAHA “curious” group agree with the statement: “I am nervous about the safety of the things I put in my body, like food, medicine, and vaccines.”

Still, Aaron said most MAHA faithful are just not focused on vaccines.

“The vaccine thing was a very big deal to a lot of people who are really into that particular conversation, because they’ve either been injured or harmed by it, or they didn’t like how the response to COVID was — in terms of the force and sort of authoritarian conversations they felt around mandates. But that’s a smaller group of people. Most people have a very positive view of vaccines. They look at them and say, ‘They’re good.’”

So why do we think MAHA is anti-vaccine?

Listening to Aaron, it sounds like there’s a kind of MAHA silent majority that’s being overlooked.

“I think the media does its job to make sure that it’s always in the most contentious of spaces — and on the most controversial thing. That’s what media does. It sells things. It’s a sales whore — that’s what media is.”

The Progressive Movement did not tie its fortunes to one political party. The amorphous reform movement was just happy to notch wins. However, MAHA thus far, has been aligned with Republicans.

Navigator Research is a progressive-leaning firm that conducts surveys, digging into what’s happening in the electorate. They want progressive politicians and institutions to spot opportunities and pitfalls in the shifts they’re seeing.

Their poll found big percentages of Americans frustrated with healthcare (70% of all Americans now think that big drug and health care companies have rigged the medical system to pad their profits), concerned about food (81% overall support removing food dyes) and toxins (79% overall support reducing pesticides), while not being either anti-doctor (77% overall trust doctors) or anti-vaccine (63% overall were opposed to Florida’s plans to end school vaccine requirements).

And when Erica sees that 89% of Democrats, 83% of Republicans, 87% of Independents, and 82% of MAHA “curious” want to hold corporate polluters accountable…or 91% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans, 83% of Independents, and 80% of MAHA “curious” agree that good health care is a human right—she sees a real change.

“I’ve been a pollster for almost 20 years, and these numbers blew my mind… We can’t get 80% of Republicans and Democrats to agree the sky is blue, but over 80% are now agreeing on all these things.”

“The American people have now come to an agreement on these things — but there’s got to be political will somewhere to do them. This is incredible.”

“There’s a huge opening here for Democrats,” Erica said. “I’d say there’s a huge opening for someone to expand the conversation on what healthcare means in this country—how we afford it, and how we keep our families healthy.”

But will Democrats seize this opportunity? The party is currently trying to force Republicans to renew the ACA subsidies set to expire at the end of the year—subsidies that help millions afford healthcare. Without an extension, Democrats are refusing to vote to reopen the government.

(The Congressional Budget Office estimates that around 2 million more Americans will end up uninsured next year if the subsidies are not renewed.)

But is the party willing and capable of broadening its health horizon beyond access and costs?

Aaron was blunt: “I agree they have an opening. I don’t think they’ll ever take it.”

The new poll shows a country with a growing appetite for anti-corporate health populism. Both political parties once tapped into the Progressive Era’s energy and zeal for change. So, maybe? Wait. Scratch that. They didn’t have social media back then.