Skeptics often argue that the average voter doesn’t care about the culture wars because they don’t know what CRT or cancel culture are, and are focused on bread-and-butter issues. So we decided to test this theory. To gauge the importance of culture war issues, I asked people to name their top three priorities from a list of nine issue baskets. For one of those baskets I used a broad definition of cancel culture that covers a range of terms through which people understand cancel culture: “Political Correctness, Free Speech, Cancel Culture, Wokeness, People Falsely Accused of Racism and Sexism.” Even without including critical race theory in that list, 10 percent of respondents ranked this suite of issues as the most important facing the country, behind only COVID/Economy and Health Care. Other surveys show a similar mid-range ranking for “cancel culture/political correctness” among a list of 24 issues.

Cancel culture issues ranked in the top three for 31 percent of voters, including a third of Independents and 17 percent of Democrats. Among Republicans, nearly half (48 percent) placed this issue in their top three, above religion and moral values, with only immigration and COVID/Economy scoring higher.

It’s just no longer tenable to claim that these questions aren’t on voters’ radar and can’t swing elections.