Recent Survey Suggests Anti-Wokism Going Against the Grain of Voters

WASHINGTON — While there are big differences in how Republicans and Democrats view corporate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, voters of all political stripes take a dim view of government meddling in such programs, a recent survey found.

The study, “Navigating DEI,” was conducted and released by ROKK Solutions ahead of the start of the 2024 primary season, and while the researchers had an inkling of what they’d find due to previous studies, “the strong opposition in the DEI space was really eye-opening,” said Lindsay Singleton, the consultancy’s chief development officer.

Curious to learn more after the initial round of polling 1,008 registered voters nationwide was completed, the researchers went back and did in-depth interviews with some of the individual participants.

“What we found was that on the Democratic side, there was a view that corporations should be doing all of the things that typically are rolled into these initiatives,” Singleton said.

“Given how high a priority diversity, equity and inclusion were to the Democrats we spoke with, the idea that corporations would be hindered from executing on these programs was anathema,” she said.

For Republicans, the concern over lawmakers interfering with corporate DEI programs came more from their viewing the situation as a free speech or government overreach issue.

“That’s perfectly understandable, as again, they align with long held values of the party,” Singleton said.

“What was interesting was the common ground we identified,” she continued, “Though they had different reasoning driving their beliefs, members of both parties were loud and clear in expressing their belief that the long hand of government extending into private corporations and telling them what they can and can’t do, in terms of internal policies, is not something they would support.”

One of the most interesting findings of the poll is that while only 35% of Republicans said they believed there was a clear business reason for adopting a DEI program, the number jumped by 10 percentage points when they were asked if diversity among their employees positively impacted feelings of social inequality and the well-being of their workforce.

Singleton said that finding suggested to her that corporations should do a better job of communicating the success and benefits of such programs.

“What it indicates to me is that there’s an opportunity here for Republican voters to better understand and appreciate the purpose and impact of DEI programs,” she said. “It also suggests that there’s less difference than we’ve previously assumed in the attitudes of Republican and Democratic voters when it comes to the issue of DEI.”

Singleton said the impetus behind the research was the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in the combined cases of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina.

In a 6-3 ruling the court held that Harvard and UNC’s admissions programs, which account for race at various stages in the process, violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

The high court held that the interests asserted by Harvard and UNC — such as “training future leaders in the public and private sectors” and “producing new knowledge … from diverse outlooks” — were not “sufficiently coherent” to be allowed to stand.

In other words, the justices in the majority said, the means that Harvard and UNC chose were not sufficiently connected to the interests they pursued.

“That, to us, felt like a real harbinger of things to come,” Singleton said. “Though the ruling only addressed college admission programs, we immediately sensed it would open the door to challenges in the corporate space.

“One big thing we wanted to know was whether the growing politicization of DEI programs by those in the political class were really resonating with voters,” she said.

At the time that the survey was done, in the fall of 2023, the self-made poster boy for anti-wokism and anti-DEI sentiment was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who spoke at length on the presidential campaign trail about his battles with Disney and other corporations over their woke policies, and how he’d gotten the better of them.

“He declared things like ‘Florida is where wokeism goes to die,’ but in reality, his efforts had not panned out the way he thought they would, and in some cases, they backfired,” Singleton said.

“It wasn’t long before he started to see a decline in donor support because this message was not connecting with voters the way that he thought that it would,” she said.

DeSantis suspended his Republican presidential campaign just before the New Hampshire primary while endorsing his bitter rival former President Donald Trump.

“Now, I would argue that if he’d read our previous research on this topic last year, he would have known he was not going to capture the hearts and minds of constituents in quite the way he had hoped.

“What it showed is that the focal point for politicians, as it has always been, really has to keep being those kitchen table issues that are really about the livelihoods and success of regular American voters in their communities,” she said.

“As for anti-wokism, I think we’re going to see quite a bit less of it as the election moves forward,” she added. “Any politician who has been paying attention is going to realize, maybe this is not where I want to focus my efforts.”

For all this, the poll also identified a healthy amount of skepticism among both Republicans and Democrats when it came to DEI programs.

Singleton said their skepticism is well placed.

“I think if there is one thing we have very clearly uncovered with this survey it is a real ‘say-do’ gap that voters have taken notice of,” she said.

“The height of corporate statements around external social issues really started with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers,” she continued. “For maybe the next year, you saw companies coming out about every social issue and offering ‘hopes and prayers’ for every liberal cause.

“Voters and stakeholders, employees and consumers may have appreciated that at the beginning, but then they also saw that nothing happened. Companies talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk. And that has contributed to a real increase in skepticism, which we see now,” she said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue