The network revealed Monday that more than a third of registered American voters surveyed in March identified themselves as followers of Trump’s Make American Great Again movement.
The figure is up from NBC News’ polling just before Election Day, in which just 29 percent of respondents identified themselves as followers of MAGA.
That overall share is powered by 71 percent of Republicans who responded to the survey identifying themselves as MAGA supporters, up from 55 percent just before voters cast their ballots in November for the 2024 presidential election.
The findings also suggest a 16-point uptick in MAGA identification among college-educated men, from 21 percent in 2024 to 37 percent in March.
Despite last month deriding NBC as “one of the worst networks on television,” Trump took to Truth Social just before midnight on Monday to share his jubilation over the survey’s results.
“A just out NBC Poll says that MAGA is gaining tremendous support,” he wrote. “I am not, at all, surprised!!!”
It marks a dramatic shift from the beginning of the presidential primaries in January 2024, when presidential candidates were battling it out to be at the top of the GOP ticket, when just 20 percent of registered voters, per NBC polling, said they were MAGA followers.
The MAGA moniker, which former President Ronald Reagan first used during his 1980 presidential campaign, was popularized by Trump while on the campaign trail in 2016. It became a mainstay of his campaigning efforts during the 2020 and 2024 election cycles.
While the president, his administration, and his followers still repeatedly use the phrase, the ubiquitous political slogan has evolved to represent Trump’s political ideology and base of loyal supporters.
“All of that shift is coming from Republicans,” Bill McInturff, GOP pollster from Public Opinion Strategies who conducted the survey on behalf of NBC News, said. One thousand registered voters were surveyed from between March 7 to March 11.
The latest NBC News poll follows the president’s matching his best-ever approval rating of 47 percent in the outlet’s March poll, although 51 percent of respondents disapproved of his performance.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten called a newly-released CBS News-YouGov survey “the worst poll that Donald Trump has received in his second term.”
The data suggest that 54 percent of voters say Trump is mainly responsible for the economic downturn, compared with just 21 percent who still blame former President Joe Biden.
“Donald Trump may try to blame Joe Biden, and maybe that was working a month ago, but since the tariff war began, it’s not working anymore,” Enten explained Sunday. “Americans are not buying what Donald Trump is selling them.”
