Cross-Pressured with Baxter Oliphant and Gabe Borelli of the Pew Research Center

Every few years, Pew stops asking Americans whether they're Republicans or Democrats and instead lets the data decide where the lines actually fall. This year it landed on nine groups — and the most-discussed one is defined less by policy than by style: 53% of the "No Apologies Right" say they like it when politicians they agree with humiliate their opponents. Senior Researcher Baxter Oliphant and Research Associate Gabriel Borelli join Farrah to talk about how you build a typology from scratch, why the 62% of Americans who aren't in the four "anchor" groups are the most interesting people in the data, and why everyone wanting a third party is not the same as everyone wanting the same third party. Also: what a typology genuinely can't tell you, and why that's worth saying out loud.

J. Baxter Oliphant is a Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center, focusing on U.S. politics and policy — including partisan polarization, trust in government, gun policy, and U.S. foreign policy. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/baxter-oliphant/

Gabriel Borelli is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center focusing on U.S. politics and policy. He ran the modeling for the 2026 typology. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/gabriel-borelli/

"They're the group that really stood out for saying they like it when politicians that they agree with humiliate their opponents. That just wasn't a group that would have popped fifteen years ago." — Baxter Oliphant, on the No Apologies Right

"There are laws of physics, but there's not really laws of politics. There's just tendencies." — Baxter Oliphant

• Beyond Red vs. Blue: The 2026 Political Typology — Pew Research Center, June 10, 2026.
• Take the political typology quiz
• How political typology groups feel about the midterm elections and Trump
• How foreign policy values and issues cut across the political typology groups
• Appendix B: Typology group creation and analysis
• Appendix C: The history of the political typology — the nine typologies going back to 1987 (1987, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021, 2026). Worth browsing as a set of time capsules.
• The 2021 political typology — the previous version, with its Stressed Sideliners and Outsider Left groups, referenced by Gabe as a comparison point.

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