MAGA meritocracy

What's hiding behind the partisan gap on the American Dream?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is sharply critical of DEI programs, has also torpedoed the promotions of several nonwhite and female military officers. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

A quasi-religious belief in hard work’s ability to yield success is nearly every American’s birthright. Even when the economy feels like an apocalyptic wasteland.

Respondents to The Argument’s March poll were pessimistic about both their own economic prospects and the nation’s; majorities gave pessimistic answers on whether their income is keeping up with the cost of living (65% say no) and whether it’s harder to get a job now compared to 25 years ago (77% think it is). Most disapproved of Donald Trump’s handling of the economy (58%) and weren’t optimistic that the economy would improve within a year (50%).

And yet, the American dream is alive and well.

Despite the widespread economic pessimism in other areas, when asked if they agreed with the statement “If I work hard, I will get ahead in life,” 61% of respondents said they did, while only 33.5% disagreed. A majority of voters still believe that hard work will pay off.¹

Looking more closely at the responses, one divide stands out: not age, nor gender (eight point gap), nor college education (seven point gap), but political ideology.

While only 49% of liberals agreed that hard work was likely to get them ahead in life, an astounding 75% of conservatives did. This is despite the fact that, like liberals, majorities of conservatives were pessimistic on the questions about their own financial prospects.

The left-right ideological split on this question is much greater than what we saw in similar polls taken just two years ago near the end of the Biden presidency. One poll in January of 2024 showed no major ideological gap on the question, while another, taken that July, showed only a six-point difference — with conservatives only somewhat more likely to say the American dream is still possible for people to achieve.

Looking further back, in 2009, at the height of Barack Obama’s popularity, Republicans were 13 points more likely than Democrats to believe in the American dream, per Gallup’s version of this question. Gallup concluded that “unlike other metrics more prone to partisan swings from one party-led administration to another, there seems to be less of a partisan swing among Americans on this question.”

If this were just a question of feeling more optimistic when the party you support is in power, you might expect Democrats to have been more likely to say hard work pays off during the Biden and Obama years. But conservatives were still more optimistic than liberals on this question, even under Democratic presidents.

The 26-point gap we’re seeing now, though, is larger than we’ve seen historically. And if you compare “very liberal” respondents to “very conservative” respondents, the ideological gap widens to 33 points (48% to 81%). That represents a fairly strong gradient among conservatives,² which suggests that something ideological is happening, not just pure partisan cheerleading.

This growing partisan split can be, in part, explained by the broader context of shifting attitudes toward meritocracy over the last decade. As politically engaged, elite liberals polarized against meritocracy — arguing it was either rigged for billionaires or an impediment to social justice — the politically engaged right developed a ruthless, no-holds-barred attitude toward “meritocratic” advancement.

These views have now broken into the mainstream, and they may be boosting ideologically polarized views around the question of hard work.

The deepening divide over meritocracy

Democrats and Republicans have changed how they talk about hard work and the American dream.

Starting with the rise of the progressive left after Bernie Sanders’ run in 2016, the notion that the economy was irretrievably rigged — and therefore hard work was fruitless — became more widespread on the left. You can see this in an eight-point drop on the “hard work” question among Democrats in 2019 compared to a decade prior.