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Predictors and Prevalence of Support for White Nationalism in The United States
Using a new survey measure that first explains white nationalist beliefs before asking about support, researchers estimate that nearly 5% of white American adults endorse the ideology, with support concentrated among young white men, the economically strained, and people whose closest friendships exist only online.
Citation
Egan, P.J., Bisbee, J. & Tucker, J.A. Predictors and prevalence of support for white nationalism in the United States. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11018-0
Date Posted
Sep 16, 2026
Authors
Area of Study
Abstract
White nationalism has become increasingly visible in American public life. Yet we lack knowledge of the predictors and prevalence of explicit support for this ideology, as survey research has treated it as a latent construct captured through indirect indicators. We introduce and validate a measure that informs respondents of the core tenets of the white nationalist movement and then asks whether they support the movement. Expressed support is distinct from organizational affiliation with the movement, which we do not measure. Here we show with three national surveys of non-Hispanic white adults (conducted from 2021 to 2025) that support for white nationalism is (1) higher among white people encountering personal hardship and local social distress, consistent with strain theories3,16; (2) unrelated to local racial composition or recent demographic change, complicating status threat accounts4,17,18; and (3) elevated among white people with close friendships primarily online, consistent with theories of extremism driven by online mobilization7,10,19. Support for white nationalism is more common among white people with lower incomes and education, Republicans and conservatives, and those who are politically disaffected. In our national probability sample, prevalence of support was estimated at 4.9% of white adults, including 13.5% of white men aged 18–29. Support for white nationalism seems to constitute a discrete dimension of white racial attitudes, and many white people who endorse its core ideas are unaware of the label.
Background
Support for white nationalism has typically been measured indirectly, through batteries of questions about racial superiority or ethnic homogeneity, without ever naming the movement itself. This approach also tends to treat white nationalism as a predictor of other views — on immigration, political violence, or COVID — rather than as something worth explaining in its own right. The authors set out to measure explicit support directly, while addressing a key risk: many people may not recognize the term even if they'd agree with its underlying ideas. They test three explanations for why someone might embrace this ideology: strain theory (personal or community-level hardship creates vulnerability to radicalization), status threat theory (a perceived loss of group power fuels resentment toward other groups), and online mobilization theory (the internet's lack of gatekeeping helps recruit and radicalize, particularly isolated individuals).
Study
The researchers built a measure that first describes the white nationalist movement's core tenets — that white people are under demographic threat, deserve more political and economic power, and that white culture is superior — then asks respondents directly whether they support the movement. They fielded three national surveys of non-Hispanic white U.S. adults: an extensive 2021 survey (N=3,227) via the Cooperative Election Study, a high-quality nationally representative 2024 survey (N=2,114) via NORC's AmeriSpeak panel, and a supplementary 2024–2025 survey (N=2,548) via CloudResearch used to validate the measure and test for response bias. Half of respondents in the first two studies were randomly shown the descriptive explanation before answering, while the other half answered first, then again after being informed — allowing the researchers to isolate the effect of simply knowing what the term means.
Results
Informing people of the movement's meaning increased expressed support substantially in the 2021 study (from 3.8% to 7.6%), though the effect was smaller and not statistically significant in the more rigorous 2024 sample. This gap between informed and uninformed responses was largest among people who already scored high on related measures — strong white identity, belief that minority groups hold "too much power," and support for intimidation or violence — suggesting the informed responses were more accurate, not inflated. The researchers ruled out several sources of upward bias, including inattentive respondents, acquiescence bias, and question-order priming effects.
On predictors: support was significantly higher among young white men (13 percentage points higher for men aged 18–29 versus 65+) but showed no age relationship among women. It was higher among people with less education and income, more frequent religious attendance, conservatives, Republicans, and the politically disaffected. Personal hardship and local community distress both predicted support, but local racial composition or demographic change did not — undercutting status-threat explanations. General social media use wasn't linked to support, but having all of one's closest friends known "only online" was associated with 13 points higher support.
The national prevalence estimate, drawn from the highest-quality sample, was 4.9% of white adults overall, climbing to 13.5% among young white men. The authors caution that this reflects agreement with a set of beliefs, not necessarily identification with or participation in the organized movement, and that their cross-sectional design can't establish causation — the relationships are corroborative rather than proof of any single explanatory theory.