Kenneth Glad
Longstanding political loyalties can become intertwined with identity and belonging. Leadership transitions can expose tensions between personal attachment, institutions and social relationships.
Donald Trump’s eventual departure from political life will pose an unusual problem for a movement so closely associated with one person. Social science cannot predict how supporters will respond, but research on charismatic leadership, identity, group conflict and disengagement offers several plausible outcomes.
On his YouTube channel, author Lucas Bean has approached the question through psychological research, drawing on studies of identity, group loyalty and social behavior to examine what could happen to MAGA once Trump is no longer at its center.
The research does not point to one inevitable outcome, but it does offer clues about how such a movement might fragment, persist or gradually lose support.
Political identities can survive their founders. Institutions can preserve a leader’s project, factions can compete over succession, and supporters can gradually disengage.
Can MAGA outlive Trump?
MAGA will not be starting from scratch when Trump eventually leaves politics. The movement already has politicians, activist groups, media personalities and organizations capable of carrying parts of his agenda forward. What is much harder to pass on is the personal loyalty Trump has built around himself.
That problem is an old one. Sociologist Max Weber wrote about what happens when authority rests heavily on the perceived exceptional qualities of a single leader. Such movements sometimes disappear with their founder, but they can also survive by turning personal loyalty into something more permanent: Institutions, offices, traditions and rules. Weber called this the routinization of charisma.
MAGA has already gone some way down that road. Trump has reshaped the Republican Party, elevated a generation of politicians who speak his political language and helped create a media environment that does not depend entirely on his own appearances. None of that guarantees, however, that another politician can simply step into his place.
Research on what psychologists call identity fusion helps explain why. William Swann and his colleagues have studied people whose sense of self becomes unusually closely tied to a group or cause, called identity fusion.
Later, Philip Moniz and Swann followed committed Trump supporters from the 2020 election period through 2024. They found that people who were more strongly fused with Trump became more likely to accept his false claims that the election had been stolen, while belief in those claims was also linked to stronger attachment over time.
Bean makes a similar point in his videos when he describes Trump as having become part of the social and personal identity of some supporters. The difficult part of succession, then, may not be finding another Republican with similar policies. It may be finding someone capable of inspiring the same kind of loyalty.
Rival factions could redefine MAGA
Movements facing uncertainty can become increasingly concerned with determining who genuinely belongs.
Research published in 1988 by José M. Marques, Vincent Yzerbyt and Jacques Philippe Leyens demonstrated what became known as the black sheep effect. Under some circumstances, people judge undesirable members of their own group more harshly than comparable outsiders, particularly when the insider threatens the group’s identity.
That mechanism could become important during a succession battle. A conventional political opponent already stands outside MAGA. A former ally who claims to represent its authentic future creates a more complicated dispute.
Bean argues that Trump’s absence could leave different camps competing over who legitimately represents the movement.
One faction might embrace a successor while another accuses that politician of compromising Trump’s original project. Others could elevate different elements of his agenda.
The result would not necessarily be the disappearance of MAGA. It could be several competing political descendants claiming the same inheritance.
Leaving does not require conversion
Other supporters may simply become less involved.
Sociologist Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh studied 185 people who had left roles that once organized large portions of their lives. Her research describes recurring elements in role exit: Doubts, consideration of alternatives, a turning point and development of an identity outside the former role.
Leaving is therefore not merely about changing an opinion. Important identities can provide friendships, routines and belonging.
Research by Tina Wilchen Christensen on former right wing extremists similarly found that identities and habits could persist after formal involvement ended.
Bean also argues that some Trump supporters may simply reduce their participation instead of announcing a dramatic political conversion.
Such decline could be difficult to observe. Someone may stop attending events, donate less or spend less time following politics while still voting Republican and retaining many of the same views.
A movement can lose emotional intensity before it clearly loses voters.
Skepticism has several sources
Lucas Bean asks why some people appear less receptive to Trump’s political appeal. He emphasizes education, contact with different social groups and familiarity with deception.
Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp’s major meta analysis brought together 515 studies and 713 independent samples. Overall, greater contact between different social groups was associated with lower prejudice.
Another study involving 34,286 participants in 16 countries examined COVID 19 misinformation and found that a more analytical cognitive style was associated with better truth discernment.
Neither result means education or analytical ability prevents propaganda from working. Highly educated people remain susceptible to motivated reasoning and political identity.
Bean argues that experience with manipulative people can help someone recognize deceptive behavior.
Marianne Junger, Luka Koning, Pieter Hartel and Bernard Veldkamp surveyed 2,864 people about fraud, however. Among near victims, knowledge of fraud was far more commonly credited with recognizing deception than previous personal experience.
What comes after Trump is the real test
There is no obvious handoff waiting for MAGA. Trump has spent years making himself the movement’s central reference point, and that leaves a basic problem for whoever comes next: Copying his policies is one thing, replacing his hold on supporters is another. A successor may be able to inherit parts of his agenda without inheriting the same emotional connection or sense of loyalty.
Some may rally around another figure. Others may remain attached to Trump long after he is gone from politics, while competing factions argue over who best represents what he built.
For many, the change may be less dramatic: MAGA could simply become less central to their lives as other political concerns, identities and priorities take over.
What happens will depend on whether the movement can survive the loss of the person who has defined it more than anyone else. If it does, it may look very different from the movement Trump led himself. That question is likely to matter far more than whether MAGA formally continues to exist.
Sources
- Lucas Bean, YouTube: What Happens When Trump Is Gone
- Lucas Bean, YouTube: How MAGA Cult Ends
- Lucas Bean, YouTube: How Trump Cult End
- Max Weber, Economy and Society
- William B. Swann Jr. et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009
- Philip Moniz and William B. Swann, PS: Political Science and Politics, 2025
- José M. Marques, Vincent Yzerbyt and Jacques Philippe Leyens, European Journal of Social Psychology, 1988
- Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Tina Wilchen Christensen, Outlines: Critical Practice Studies, 2019
- Thomas F. Pettigrew and Linda R. Tropp, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006
- Marianne Junger, Luka Koning, Pieter Hartel and Bernard Veldkamp, Frontiers in Psychology, 2023
