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About 5 percent of white American adults express support for the core ideas of the white nationalist movement, with rates rising to over 13 percent among young white men. The research indicates that personal hardships and isolated online social lives predict this support, rather than changing local racial demographics. The findings were published in Nature.
White nationalism is an ideology based on the belief that white people are under threat in the United States and that the white race must ensure its survival. According to this worldview, white people should hold more political and economic power than other groups, maintain a demographic majority, and treat white culture as superior to all other cultures. The movement operates through informal online networks, paramilitary groups, and public rallies. Until recently, public opinion researchers had not directly measured how many Americans explicitly endorse these exact principles.
Previous research has shown that white Americans hold distinct in-group racial identities, which sets the stage for understanding their political behavior. For instance, a 2019 study showed that many white Americans possess a strong sense of white racial solidarity. Other studies have explored what might cause these group-based attitudes to turn hostile.
A 2014 study indicated that learning about the country’s growing non-white population tends to make white Americans feel threatened and adopt more conservative views. Additionally, a study covered by PsyPost in 2020 found that people holding extreme white identitarian attitudes tend to score lower in personality traits related to politeness and openness to new experiences.
“We observed white nationalist ideas becoming more visible in American public life—in marches and rallies, on the internet and social media, and even in election campaigns,” Patrick J. Egan, a professor of politics and public policy and director of the Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse & Civic Solutions at New York University, told PsyPost.
“That led us to wonder the extent to which white nationalism appeals to the broader public, and who is most likely to support it,” Egan explained. “It turned out no academic study had directly measured support for the white nationalist movement before, and so we decided to investigate these questions ourselves.”
Egan and his colleagues suspected that explicit support for white nationalism might actually be driven by personal economic hardship or online radicalization, rather than local demographic changes. They also wanted to measure support directly by providing respondents with an accurate definition of the movement, reducing the chance that people would misunderstand the label.
To explore this, the researchers conducted three national surveys of non-Hispanic white adults in the United States. In the first study, conducted in 2021, the team surveyed 3,227 people using an online panel matched to national demographics. To test whether people truly understood what white nationalism meant, the researchers ran an experiment. Half of the participants were asked if they supported the movement, while the other half were given a short, factual description of its core beliefs about white power and cultural superiority before being asked the same question.
Providing the definition increased expressed support from 3.8 percent to 7.6 percent. When people were informed about the movement’s actual goals, their answers aligned more closely with their other racial attitudes, such as their sense of white identity and their opposition to minority groups holding power. This suggests that some white Americans agree with the movement’s ideas but are unfamiliar with the term white nationalism until it is explained to them.
Using the fully informed responses, the researchers then looked for demographic predictors. They found that support for white nationalism was 15 percentage points higher among people without a high school diploma compared to those with postgraduate degrees. It was also higher among conservatives, Republicans, frequent church attenders, people who believe in political conspiracies, and those who feel disconnected from politics entirely.
The researchers then tested the competing theories about what drives these beliefs. They found evidence supporting the idea that social and economic strain plays a role. People who had experienced three or more personal hardships in the past year, such as job loss or divorce, were 4 percentage points more likely to support white nationalism than those who experienced none. Living in a county with high levels of social distress, measured by poverty and unemployment rates, also predicted higher support.
However, the researchers found no evidence that changing local demographics drive white nationalist support. Living in a county with a large non-white population or a rapidly shrinking white population was not associated with endorsing the movement. The researchers note that these findings challenge the common assumption that everyday exposure to racial diversity fuels white nationalist grievance.
“One finding that is somewhat unexpected is that white people living in areas that are becoming more racially diverse were not more likely to support white nationalism,” Egan said. “This is in contrast to what we would expect from status-threat theories, which hold that demographic change can spark backlash and resentment.”
“Of course, we don’t have causal evidence in either direction here: our null findings regarding status threat may in part stem from suppressor bias introduced by whites’ residential sorting into preferred ethnoracial environments,” he added. In other words, if white Americans who dislike diversity simply move to neighborhoods that match their preferred racial makeup, it could mask the true relationship between demographic changes and nationalist views.
The study also explored the role of the internet. General social media use did not predict support for white nationalism. Instead, the nature of a person’s social ties mattered. Support was 13 percentage points higher among respondents who said all three of their closest friends were people they only knew online, compared to those whose closest friends were all known in real life.
In 2024, the researchers conducted a second study to confirm these patterns using a probability-based sample of 2,114 non-Hispanic white adults. This method is generally considered more accurate for estimating how common a belief is in the general population. This second survey replicated the main demographic findings, including the strong link between lower education, lower income, and higher support for white nationalism.
Based on this second sample, the researchers estimated that 4.9 percent of white American adults support the white nationalist movement once its tenets are explained to them. Support was highest among young men. The data showed that 13.5 percent of white men aged 18 to 29 endorsed the movement. The researchers noted that young men today spend vast amounts of time online and face unique social and economic challenges, potentially making them more receptive to grievance narratives.
A third survey, involving 2,548 white adults in late 2024 and early 2025, was designed to rule out statistical errors. The researchers tested whether respondents were just clicking a button to agree with whatever the survey asked, a phenomenon known as acquiescence bias. They also checked if asking about racial attitudes earlier in the survey primed people to express more extreme views. The results held up against these checks, confirming that the measurement of white nationalist support was robust.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that exposing white Americans to news about a growing non-white population did not actually increase their feelings of racial threat or worsen their attitudes toward minorities. The new study builds on this by showing that even real-world, local demographic trends fail to predict explicit support for white nationalism.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relies on observational data taken at specific points in time, meaning it cannot strictly determine cause and effect. Unmeasured factors, such as underlying personality traits or mental health challenges, might make someone more likely to experience personal hardships and also more susceptible to extreme political views.
The connection between online friendships and white nationalism is also complex. While isolated people might fall into online extremism, it is equally possible that holding extreme, unconventional political views makes it difficult for someone to maintain offline friendships. This dynamic could force individuals to seek out like-minded communities entirely on the internet.
Finally, the researchers noted that their study focuses strictly on ideological agreement rather than behavior. “We want to emphasize that we are only asking about endorsement of white nationalist views,” Egan noted. “We do not measure organizational affiliation with the white nationalist movement, nor do we measure support for its tactics.”
“We hope that researchers—whether that be ourselves, or other scholars—use our measure on future surveys to determine whether support for white nationalism is changing over time,” Egan said. “This will help us know if the rising visibility of white nationalism in the US is being accompanied by rising support for its ideas in the mass public.”
The study, “Predictors and prevalence of support for white nationalism in the United States,” was authored by Patrick J. Egan, James Bisbee, and Joshua A. Tucker.