From social media to the streets of Washington, DC, the organized white nationalist movement has become more visible in the United States over the past few decades. But the extent of this extremist movement's appeal to the broader public is less certain.
New research by New York University and Vanderbilt University political scientists is the first-ever study to document the demographic, economic, and behavioral characteristics linked to explicit support for white nationalism in the US white population. Expressed support, the authors note, is distinct from organizational affiliation with the movement, which the study did not measure.
The findings, which appear in the journal Nature, show that support for white nationalism is higher among young white men than any other group in the white population that the researchers measured.
"Young people typically have more liberal views on racial matters, but the opposite is true for white nationalist beliefs among young white men," explains NYU Professor Patrick Egan, the paper's lead author. "Young men have long been prime targets for hard-line messages across the political spectrum. Time will tell if white nationalism's appeal holds for this generation of young white men as they grow older."
The researchers also found support for white nationalism to be higher among white people with less education and lower incomes, those who are more religious, and among white Republicans, conservatives, and those who are politically disaffected.
Social strain—represented by individual hardship and local economic distress—also emerged as a significant predictor of support for white nationalism.
"We found backing for white nationalism was stronger in areas with higher incidences of poverty and unemployment, and for those experiencing personal difficulties like health problems and the loss of loved ones—all of which can create conditions for grievance and resentment," says James Bisbee, an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and one of the study's authors.
The researchers, all affiliated with NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics (CSMaP), found no relationship between frequency of social media use and support for white nationalism. But they discovered that white nationalist beliefs were significantly more prevalent among those whose closest friends are exclusively online.
"More frequent social media use was not correlated with higher support for white nationalist ideas," explains NYU Professor Joshua A. Tucker, co-director of CSMaP and a paper author. "However, endorsement of these ideas is much more prevalent among people for whom two or three of their three closest friends are people they know primarily online, as opposed to offline. One implication of this finding is that online activity may be especially consequential for people who are socially isolated offline, perhaps making it more important to adopt views aligned with their online communities."
Lack of awareness among the general public can make it challenging to assess Americans' backing of emerging political movements. The Nature study used innovative methods to measure endorsement of white nationalism in three national surveys of non-Hispanic white US adults conducted in 2021, 2024, and 2024-25—together encompassing more than 7,800 respondents.
Before being asked about their support for white nationalism, study participants were given a short description of the movement that described its core tenets as commonly invoked by self-described white nationalists. Respondents were then directly asked if they supported the movement. The researchers subsequently analyzed associations with demographic, political, economic, local-contextual, and online-social factors.
Researchers validated their new measure by assessing its strength of association with established constructs of racial attitudes from scholarship in political science, psychology, and sociology. Survey experiments in the studies were used to rule out concerns that responses were influenced by question wording, inattentive respondents, response acquiescence, or priming due to placement of questions within the survey. Nearly all responses were collected online in confidential surveys, helping to reduce concerns that participants might be reluctant to disclose their true attitudes.
"By designing a direct survey measure of explicit, fully informed support for white nationalism, we can locate it within the broader structure of white racial attitudes and identify its connection to socio-economic, partisan, and behavioral characteristics," concludes Egan, director of NYU's Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions. "As white nationalism remains salient in American public life, future research can use this measure to see if the predictors and prevalence of white nationalism are sustained over time."
