New Poll Finds Most Republicans Don’t Want Government Fighting Private Companies — Even ‘Woke’ Ones

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Bad news for the “war against woke” — the new New York Times/Siena poll has former President Donald Trump trouncing his GOP competition in the 2024 primary, but one of the biggest losing battles is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) ongoing focus on the culture wars.

While there are many takeaways from the poll among Republicans who are likely planning to vote in the GOP primary, one of them presents a major conundrum for DeSantis. Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin pointed out on Twitter that among the priorities of these voters, fighting “woke” corporations is low on the list:

When asked if they would support a “candidate who promises to fight corporations that promote ‘woke’ left ideology,” only 38 percent (43 percent of men, 33 percent of women) of respondents said they would. And when asked if they’d support a “candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what companies can support,” the number jumped to 52 percent (51 percent of men, 53 percent of women).

It could be argued that the second question, compared to the first one, is a little vague since it doesn’t specify what kinds of opinions a company can express. But considering the first question uses one of DeSantis’s favorite buzzwords and gets such low support among the people whose votes he wants, that’s telling. (Then again, this shouldn’t be that surprising at all.) Megyn Kelly grilled DeSantis last week on this very topic and pressed the governor on whether or not he was waging a war on freedom of speech, despite Kelly being decidedly “anti-woke.”

And yet DeSantis presses on, pushing for a government probe into Bud Light as his wealthiest donors flee.

(h/t: Benjy Sarlin on Twitter)

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