Exclusive: GOP culture war fights were instrumental to Trump win, report says

The Republicans’ embrace of the culture war was a massive part of president-elect Donald Trump’s resounding win in 2024, according to an American Principles Project (APP) report released Tuesday.

Republican messaging on transgender issues such as child sex changes, men in women’s sports, and taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners swayed voters by 1.3 to 2.7 points to Trump’s side, according to the report. In many swing states crucial to his victory, Trump won by smaller margins, including Georgia by 2.2 points, Pennsylvania by 1.7, Michigan by 1.4 and Wisconsin by .9 points.

“This was the first election where the American people had finally had enough, and they were sick and tired of all the radical changes,” Terry Schilling, president of the APP, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They had a champion in Donald Trump that was willing to take them on.”

Pro-transgender positions are highly unpopular among the American electorate, with 75% being against letting biological men compete in women’s sports and 72% agreeing to a prohibition against children receiving transgender surgeries or drugs, according to a Napolitan News/RMG Research poll taken in November post-election. Trump took advantage of the sentiment, while Vice President Kamala Harris took on the political baggage of having pro-trans policy.

“They had built up essentially an artificial political movement,” Schilling told the DCNF. “They made this whole transgender push built around all the oppression happening against people who identify as transgender, and it just turned out to be completely garbage.”

Some Republican strategists have suggested that engaging with culture war issues would hurt the party electorally, however Schilling told the DCNF that the 2024 election proved that line of thinking wrong, and attributes lackluster performance in the 2022 midterms to some Republicans being skittish on culture war issues like transgenderism.

In 2022, a so-called “red wave” of electoral wins in the wake of perceived failures from the Biden administration never materialized, partially driven by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Democrats outspending republicans in key states by enormous margins, according to a Heritage Action for America report.

“You can argue whatever you want now as a political consultant or a political pundit, but you’re just an idiot if you think we shouldn’t talk about the culture war,” Schilling told the DCNF. “It’s a major vulnerability for Democrats, and we should be exploiting every opportunity we can to show the American people just how insane they are.”

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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