Majority of Americans actually view the word 'woke' as a positive

"Woke" has been a term at the centre of political debate in recent years - and now a new poll shows what Americans think about the word.

The USA Today-Ipsos poll released on Wednesday shows most Americans have a positive association with the word, with 56 per cent believing it to have positive connotations as they understand it to mean "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices."

Though some divide still remains. 36 per cent of Americans have a negative association with "woke" as they understood it to mean “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words."

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There is also division over whether being described as "woke" is an insult as 40 per cent believe it to be, while 32 per cent see it as a compliment instead.

The right often use "woke" negatively in political debate, and this is reflected in the poll where a majority of Republicans (60 percent) consider the word to be an insult, compared to nearly half of Democrats (46 per cent) who take it as a compliment when asked how they would respond if someone called them “woke."

This poll comes after what has been described the Republican's "war on wokeness" last year, as The Guardian's Michael Harriot described how "anti-woke become an ideology in itself," in 2022.

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis declared "Florida is where woke goes to die" in his re-election speech in November.

"We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob," he said.

There were 1,023 adults surveyed for the USA Today-Ipsos poll that was conducted between March 3-5, with a margin of sampling error at percentage points.

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