Eastern Standard: October 15th, 2026

I'm speaking today with Baxter Oliphant, who is a senior researcher at Pew Research Center, where he focuses on U.S. politics and policy research, including partisan polarization, trust in government, gun policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

So welcome to the program, Baxter.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

So Pew recently published a fascinating piece, and you were one of the authors of this piece, that shows a more nuanced picture beneath the partisan divide.

And you construct a new political typology that shows how this complexity plays out and gives us a picture of an America with far more than two colors in it.

So I want to just talk to you a little bit about that research.

In particular, you identified nine political types and you identify four anchor groups, two on the right and two on the left, and then others that are some kind of mix of that.

Can you take us through and describe these two sets of anchor groups?

Certainly.

We conducted a survey of about 10,000 Americans last November and And we took their responses across 80 questions that touch on political values, political attitudes, and also just how they like politics to be carried out.

And we did find that their American public breaks down into nine groups.

And Two groups were more Republican and more conservative than kind of the rest of the public.

So we called those our right anchor groups.

One of those groups we called the No Apologies Right.

They're unwavering Trump supporters.

They really like his, to use a big word, pugilistic style.

They like politics to be a They want no backing down.

They're very traditionalist in their attitudes, but not quite as religious as the other right anchor group, which we called the Faith First Conservatives.

Both of them are very strong supporters of the president.

But they differ in kind of their emphasis, and while they're both very traditional, no apologies, right? They don't emphasize the religious aspects of politics.

They're not as motivated by, for example, abortion, where the faith-first conservatives, they're very clear that their politics are about their faith.

That they're driven by faith.

They want traditional values, traditional family structures.

Both of them agree that they want a smaller government providing fewer services.

I'm speaking today with Baxter Oliphant, who is a senior researcher at Pew Research Center, where he focuses on U.S. politics and policy research, including partisan polarization, trust in government, gun policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

So welcome to the program, Baxter.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

So Pew recently published a fascinating piece, and you were one of the authors of this piece, that shows a more nuanced picture beneath the partisan divide.

And you construct a new political typology that shows how this complexity plays out and gives us a picture of an America with far more than two colors in it.

So I want to just talk to you a little bit about that research.

In particular, you identified nine political types and you identify four anchor groups, two on the right and two on the left, and then others that are some kind of mix of that.

Can you take us through and describe these two sets of anchor groups?

Certainly.

We conducted a survey of about 10,000 Americans last November and And we took their responses across 80 questions that touch on political values, political attitudes, and also just how they like politics to be carried out.

And we did find that their American public breaks down into nine groups.

And Two groups were more Republican and more conservative than kind of the rest of the public.

So we called those our right anchor groups.

One of those groups we called the No Apologies Right.

They're unwavering Trump supporters.

They really like his, to use a big word, pugilistic style.

They like politics to be a They want no backing down.

They're very traditionalist in their attitudes, but not quite as religious as the other right anchor group, which we called the Faith First Conservatives.

Both of them are very strong supporters of the president.

But they differ in kind of their emphasis, and while they're both very traditional, no apologies, right? They don't emphasize the religious aspects of politics.

They're not as motivated by, for example, abortion, where the faith-first conservatives, they're very clear that their politics are about their faith.

That they're driven by faith.

They want traditional values, traditional family structures.

Both of them agree that they want a smaller government providing fewer services.