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White Americans who regularly get their political news from Fox News show much higher levels of support for the Great Replacement Theory than those who do not watch the network. By tracking individual viewers over time, researchers found that increases in viewing specific television programs on this network corresponded with an elevated belief in this conspiracy theory. These findings were published in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics.
The Great Replacement Theory is a xenophobic framework with origins in right-wing French political thought. It proposes that powerful elites are deliberately relaxing immigration policies to flood the United States with foreigners. Adherents believe these undocumented immigrants will serve as an obedient voting block to keep progressive elites in power indefinitely. The theory claims this process will ultimately replace native-born white citizens and strip them of their political, economic, and cultural dominance.
Historically, these demographic fears existed isolated on the obscure margins of political discourse, largely confined to extremist websites. In recent years, high-profile conservative figures have brought these concepts out of the shadows and straight into the mainstream. Prominent politicians and major conservative media personalities have publicly endorsed variations of the theory to millions of followers.
The ideas have seen regular promotion on major cable news networks, reaching massive daily audiences. Specific conservative news programs discussed in the research include those hosted by prominent personalities like Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters. The study authors also highlight past extensive commentary on demographic replacement by Tucker Carlson, who hosted the most watched cable news program on television until his departure from the network.
According to the study text, scholars point out that individuals who subscribe to these beliefs also show an increased inclination to endorse violence as a political tool. The perpetrators of several mass shootings targeting minorities in the United States have cited the theory in their writings. Because the ideology frequently emerges alongside acts of violence, understanding how the beliefs spread has become a major concern for social scientists.
To understand why these ideas resonate with the public, scholars turn to intergroup-conflict theory. This psychological framework suggests that when a socially dominant group perceives a threat to its historical power or resources from an outside group, its members react fearfully to reassert control. The narrative of an elite conspiracy gives anxious individuals a convenient explanation for shifting national demographics. It provides a specific villain and target for their anxieties regarding the cultural changes brought about by widespread immigration.
Scholars studying public opinion also theorize that ordinary citizens rely heavily on prominent political leaders to make sense of complicated topics. Immigration policy involves intricate global economics, legal nuances, and unfamiliar demographic data. When people feel overwhelmed by complicated public policy, they fall back on mental shortcuts. Rather than expending cognitive energy researching legal frameworks or border apprehension statistics, voters simply adopt the interpretations provided by their group leaders.
Because immigration policy is highly abstract, everyday people tend to adopt the viewpoints of commentators they already trust to guide their own political attitudes. If a trusted television host repeatedly warns that a specific foreign group poses an existential threat to the nation, loyal viewers will naturally integrate that warning into their worldview. This dynamic explains why messaging from trusted media sources can powerfully mold voter behavior.
Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led a team of researchers in investigating this phenomenon. They focused specifically on the influence of conservative media on white public opinion regarding shifting demographics. The team wanted to determine if regular exposure to Fox News correlated with a person embracing the replacement conspiracy. They aimed to go beyond snapping a single picture of public opinion by looking at how individual minds evolve over passing months.
The research team tested their questions using information from a large nationwide survey of American adults. They focused on responses from more than a thousand white individuals sampled during the summer of 2024 and sampled again in the summer of 2025. Gathering survey answers from the exact same individuals over two distinct time periods is known among researchers as panel data. This structure allows researchers to track individual shifts in personal attitudes rather than just looking at societal averages.
To measure belief in the conspiracy theory, the survey asked respondents to rate their agreement with three statements on a five-point scale. The first statement proposed that immigrants invade and colonize the country. The second stated that native-born Americans are losing economic, political, and cultural influence due to growing immigrant populations. The third alleged that secret actors are actively working to ensure foreigners replace real Americans.
Participants also self-reported their private media consumption habits. They indicated whether they watched specific cable news networks on a regular basis. In addition, they specified exactly which popular daytime and primetime programs on the network they viewed at least once a month. The researchers combined these answers to create a heavily detailed picture of individual television news consumption.
The survey answers painted a distinct picture of the modern American electorate. The researchers discovered wide support for the conspiracy theory among white adults in general. Roughly half of all white respondents agreed to some extent that native-born citizens are losing their influence because of immigrants. More than a third agreed that secret actors intend to replace real Americans entirely.
When isolating the views of the network’s audience, the levels of agreement were drastically higher. Almost two thirds of the network’s regular viewers agreed that immigrants are invading and colonizing the country. Over three quarters of these conservative television viewers believed native-born Americans are actively losing their cultural and political sway.
The team ran statistical models to isolate the specific impact of the network. They adjusted the math to account for a variety of other factors that heavily shape political views. The team asked respondents about their age, gender identity, household income brackets, and highest level of schooling completed. To understand the role of racial bias, the survey questions asked respondents to express their attitudes toward various demographic minority groups.
Even with these diverse variables stripped away, watching the network remained strongly linked to endorsing the conspiracy. Simply viewing the channel occasionally was tied to higher support for the replacement ideas. Watching a wider variety of specific programs on the network was linked to even stronger support. According to the data, earning higher incomes reduced the likelihood of embracing the conspiracy, while holding a conservative ideology elevated it.
The most rigorous test of the hypothesis came from the mathematical methods applied to the panel data. The researchers compared each individual participant directly against their own past survey answers. This mathematical approach removes the possible influence of permanent personal traits and strictly looks at changes within an individual mind over a span of time.
In this stringent statistical analysis, the research team found a highly consistent pattern. People who increased the number of conservative television programs they watched between the first and second survey periods also increased their overall support for the conspiracy ideas. Because this specific model controls for personal baselines and pre-existing political leanings, the authors consider it robust evidence that watching the network actively shapes these specific attitudes.
The authors wrote in their report, “Our findings provide evidence of the continued influence of Fox News in shaping the contours of public opinion and political behavior, and they assist in better understanding the origins and relative popularity of GRT attitudes among white Americans.”
The study does come with some recognized limits regarding its observational design. The authors note that the research relies entirely on observed survey results rather than tightly controlled experimental laboratory conditions. While the repeated surveying of the exact same individuals helps establish a firm timeline of events, observational survey data cannot provide absolute proof of cause and effect by itself. The researchers suggest that future investigations should use experimental setups to verify how direct exposure to specific media clips changes a viewer’s immediate psychological mindset.
Future studies should also explore other underlying drivers of these beliefs among the mass public. The research team recommends exploring psychological traits like group dominance mentalities. They note that future research must also critically examine the popularity of these conspiracy ideas among different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Expanding the focus beyond only white voters will help political analysts map the rapidly changing landscape of American politics.
The study, “Follow the Fox? Elite Influence and White Support for the Great Replacement Theory,” was authored by Jesse Rhodes, Seth Goldman, Tatishe Mavovosi Nteta, Adam Eichen, Sabrina Lapcheske, Linda Tropp, Efrén Pérez, and Yuen Huo.
