In a televised address from Washington’s Union Station, he took aim at former president Donald Trump and the “Big Lie, that the election of 2020 had been stolen.”

Attempting to find a message of unity, the incumbent Democratic president played down the scale of what he called “MAGA Republicans”—referring to the Trump slogan “Make America Great Again”—within the GOP. But is the faction as small as he suggests?

The Claim

In a speech made on November 2, 2022, Biden said: “[Trump] has abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. And he’s made a Big Lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party—the minority of that party.”

The Facts

Biden has been making this claim about the makeup of the Republican Party for some time now.

In a notable address outside the Pennsylvania Independence Hall in September 2022, the president said: “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”

Whether that still rings true today is up for debate. Numerous polls have attempted to calculate the size of the MAGA wing of the Republican party based on support for former president Trump.

Following Biden’s speech in Philadelphia in September, CNN highlighted numerous polls that showed Trump was still popular among party members and the dominant force within the GOP.

How one defines MAGA from a policy perspective is nonetheless difficult. There is a range of ideas on immigration, manufacturing, tax, border control, and LGBTQIA+ rights that may typify a MAGA Republican.

However, denial of or doubt over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results appears to be the most consistent belief that unites the pro-Trump Republicans who could reasonably be referred to as MAGA.

Judging by the president’s speech, both in tone and content, these are the Republicans he has categorized as MAGA. While he mentioned concerns over future voting rights, election denial appeared to be the tenet by which Biden made this judgment.

“You know, American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president of the United States refused to accept the results of the 2020 election,” he said.

“If he refuses to accept the will of the people, if he refuses to accept the fact that he lost, he’s abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution.

“And he’s made a big lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party, the minority of that party.”

Moreover, election denial is tacitly intertwined with support for Trump and the MAGA agenda, given that Trump is the denial conspiracy’s chief proponent.

Therefore, while not a perfect categorization, the belief that the 2020 election was stolen (despite clear evidence to the contrary) would appear to capture a majority of MAGA Republicans.

With this as our lodestar, it certainly makes Biden’s claim that these Republicans make up a minority of the GOP questionable at the very least.

Polling has consistently shown that around 70 percent of Republicans say they don’t believe that Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, per a review of the data by Poynter; according to some polls, the proportion is closer to 80 percent.

A YouGov poll for The Economist conducted between October 29 to November 1 found that 55 percent of Republicans believe the election was “stolen” from Trump. Only a quarter disagreed with the statement, with the remaining respondents undecided.

Of course, political polling is vulnerable to selection biases and representation and may not necessarily translate to action at the ballot boxes. However, contemporaneous data showing that randomly sampled Republican voters believe the 2020 results were fraudulent does persuasively antagonize Biden’s “minority” claim.

For further proof, we can look to Congress and the midterm elections to see how many “MAGA Republicans” appear to make up the GOP.

As has been well-reported in the past few days (and as was quoted by Biden), there may be up to as many as 300 “election deniers” on the ballot this year. This includes those who fully dismiss the result to those who question the outcome of the election.

While this number appears to have been revised to 291, according to a Washington Post tracker, it still counts for more than half of the total 552 Republican nominees running for office.

An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that among those 552 Republican nominees, 199 fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election while another 61 raised questions without saying outright that the election was stolen.

So, 260 (still more than half of the total nominees) have to a greater or lesser extent questioned the validity of the results, despite clear evidence that the election results were legitimate.

Another 122 have either not commented or avoided answering the question, according to FiveThirtyEight. One might reasonably assume that at least a few of these candidates may shift toward an election denial position if pushed.

While the majority of Republican senators did certify the results of the 2020 election (which could be who Biden refers to here), many of them are defending the seats in the midterms.

There are also three Republican senators—Ted Cruz, Joshua Hawley, and Cynthia Lummis—who objected to certifying the results and are not on the ballot this year.

To what extent one might characterize these three senators as MAGA is debatable, but it is certainly more consistent with that view than less.

As explained earlier, this is an imprecise definition based on statements made by politicians, who could as easily renege or revise their views in the future. It is also not the only parameter by which one might categorize a “MAGA Republican”.

Another way to quantify MAGA is support for Trump in the 2024 Republican primary. He has not yet declared his candidacy, though he is hotly tipped to run.

A national polling average from Race to the WH puts Trump as a clear leader, at 50.3 percent. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—supportive of Trump but who could not be clearly categorized as MAGA—is second at 27.2 percent. Pence—Trump’s former vice president—is third at 8.2 percent. And fourth is Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, at 5 percent.

Trump alone has majority support. His son Trump Jr., who can be confidently classed as MAGA, adds another 5 percent on average, per the tracker. So among likely Republican primary voters, polling suggests MAGA is a majority.

The 45th president also enjoys majority support for 2024 in Republican primary polling according to the RealClearPolitics average.

Taken together, Biden’s assertion that MAGA Republicans are the minority is therefore flawed.

Not only do a considerable number of polled Republican party members position themselves with both Trump and the belief that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, but a majority of GOP midterm candidates question the result, too.

Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment.

The Ruling

False.

Biden’s use of MAGA is ill-defined and lacks a standardized definition.

However, using denial of the 2020 presidential election result as a measure that ties together MAGA supporters within the Republican Party, there is a clear majority.

Moreover, taking support of Trump in the 2024 primary as another proxy for MAGA, the former president enjoys majority backing, according to polling trackers. This further shows that MAGA Republicans are not a minority.

We therefore rate Biden’s claim as false.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team