Research 1 (survey fielded in 2021; YouGov CES)
We fielded this intensive survey to N = 3,227 non-Hispanic white individuals in November 2021 as a part of the CES—a broadly used supply of knowledge in peer-reviewed political science analysis on US public opinion. The CES’s in-depth Frequent Content material questionnaire and respondent geocodes allow documentation of the demographic and political predictors of help for white nationalism and exploration of our theories. The CES was performed on the net by the YouGov survey agency; respondents have been chosen from an opt-in panel utilizing a pattern matching and weighting methodology that yields estimates aiming to approximate these obtained from nationally consultant chance samples of US adults37. This method assumes that—conditional on the demographic variables used for weighting—panel participation is impartial of the attitudes measured right here. We notice that this assumption can’t be instantly verified, significantly for stigmatized political beliefs and identities.
The CES is made up of modules with authentic questionnaires developed by groups of university-based researchers fielded to 1,000 respondents every. All respondents additionally reply to the CES Frequent Content material questionnaire, which incorporates objects about demographics, partisanship and vote selection, coverage preferences, political information and associated subjects.
We contracted with the CES to buy questionnaire time for our research on 5 modules, which yielded a complete of 5,000 respondents. Our questionnaire was fielded solely to respondents who indicated they have been white on the Frequent Content material merchandise about racial id—a query that additionally included response selections of ‘Black’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Asian’, ‘Native American’, ‘Two or extra races’, ‘Different’ and ‘Center Jap’. We additional limit our evaluation to white individuals who answered ‘no’ to a subsequent CES query asking all those that didn’t point out ‘Hispanic’ on the race merchandise whether or not they recognized as Hispanic or Latino. Our ensuing pattern (N = 3,227) goals to be consultant of the US non-Hispanic white grownup inhabitants, estimated by the Census Bureau at 161 million in 2021 (62.1% of all adults). Demographic, political and different related traits of our pattern might be present in Supplementary Info B.
Your entire questionnaire for research 1 could also be present in Supplementary Info A. Right here we offer sources and wording of key survey objects mentioned within the textual content.
Energy of white id and help for white collective motion
Tailored from objects employed in earlier work23,24. Objects offered in random order.
Please point out how a lot you agree or disagree with the next statements:
Being white is necessary to my id.
White individuals on this nation have lots to be happy with.
Whites on this nation have lots in widespread with one another.
Whites must do extra to remind the world in regards to the challenges that white individuals face.
Whites want to start out searching extra for each other.
We’d like a political occasion centered on advancing white energy.
Objects accompanied by a five-point scale starting from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’.
Group energy
Objects offered in random order.
Please say whether or not you assume the next teams have too little, an excessive amount of or the correct amount of energy within the US right now.
Whites
Blacks
Asians
Hispanics
Evangelical Christians
Jews
Muslims
Objects accompanied by a three-point scale ‘too little energy’, ‘the correct amount of energy’ and ‘an excessive amount of energy’.
Intimidation, harassment and violence in opposition to non-white individuals
Tailored from objects developed in earlier work measuring partisan political polarization55.
Please point out your stance on the next questions.
When, if ever, is it OK for whites to ship threatening and intimidating messages to non-white leaders?
When, if ever, is it OK for an peculiar white particular person within the public to harass an peculiar non-white particular person on the web, in a approach that makes that particular person really feel unsafe?
How usually do you’re feeling it’s justified for whites to make use of violence in advancing their political targets lately?
Objects accompanied by the four-point response set ‘by no means’, ‘sometimes’, ‘steadily’ and ‘at all times’.
Endorsement of white nationalist ideology
Respondents have been randomly assigned in equal numbers to ‘therapy’ and ‘management’ teams. The therapy group was given the next description of the white nationalist motion: “The white nationalist motion holds that whites are underneath risk in america and seeks to make sure the survival of the white race on this nation. White nationalists imagine that white individuals ought to maintain extra political and financial energy than different teams. They imagine that whites ought to preserve their majority within the US and that white tradition is superior to all different cultures”. These respondents have been then requested, “Are you a supporter of the white nationalist motion?” and have been instructed to point ‘sure’ or ‘no’ on their display.
The management group was first requested this query, their responses recorded, after which requested the query once more after studying the brief description of white nationalism. Besides the place famous, all through this paper we mix the absolutely knowledgeable responses from the management group with responses from the therapy group when reporting help for white nationalism in our research.
Research 2 (survey fielded in 2024; NORC AmeriSpeak)
We replicated our key outcomes with a short nationally consultant survey of N = 2,114 non-Hispanic white individuals performed in Could and June 2024 through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel38. AmeriSpeak randomly selects households from a nationwide sampling body utilizing space chance and address-based sampling. Sampled households are recruited into the panel by US mail, phone and subject interviewers. Most respondents participated by net, however non-internet households (3.3% of the pattern) participated by phone.
This survey consisted solely of our measure of white nationalist help, with respondents randomly assigned to therapy and management teams through the identical wording and experimental process as described above. Our analyses make use of the demographic and political profile info NORC collected on AmeriSpeak panelists. Your entire questionnaire for research 2 could also be present in Supplementary Info A; demographic, political and different related traits of our pattern might be present in Supplementary Info B.
Research 3 (survey fielded in 2024–2025; CloudResearch)
In late 2024 and early 2025 we fielded a supplementary survey to a nationwide quota-based pattern of N = 2,548 non-Hispanic white individuals recruited by CloudResearch39. We stipulated quotas relating to respondents’ intercourse, age and training equivalent to their American Group Survey estimates for the US non-Hispanic white grownup inhabitants, in addition to a quota for partisanship as estimated by the 2024 CES. Your entire questionnaire for this survey could also be present in Supplementary Info A; demographic, political and different related traits of our pattern might be present in Supplementary Info B.
We fielded this survey utilizing the Qualtrics platform. The research started with a collection of demographic and political questions. Respondents have been then requested batteries of things (offered in random order) about (1) white id23; (2) holding of conspiracy beliefs56; (3) denial of white privilege57; (4) racial resentment58; (5) perception within the ‘nice substitute’ concept59; and (6) ‘old style racism’60. As proven in Supplementary Info B, query wording largely adopted that utilized in previous analysis on racial attitudes. We reverse-keyed some battery objects with a purpose to tackle considerations about acquiescence bias.
Experimental design
We probed vulnerabilities of our white nationalism measure to survey response bias with survey experiments during which contributors have been randomly assigned to situations as reported in Prolonged Knowledge Desk 5. All contributors obtained the brief description of the white nationalist motion described within the textual content. This was adopted by variations on our authentic merchandise measuring help for the motion. Members assigned to Situation A have been requested “Are you a [supporter/opponent] of the white nationalist motion?” with half of those respondents assigned to the ‘supporter’ wording (that’s, the query we fielded in research 1 and a couple of) and half assigned to the ‘opponent’ wording. Members assigned to Situation B have been requested “Do you [oppose or support/support or oppose] the white nationalist motion?” with half assigned to every wording. To evaluate priming results, half of our contributors answered their assigned model of the white nationalism merchandise at the start of the survey (earlier than responding to any racial attitudes batteries); half answered the white nationalism merchandise on the very finish of the survey.
Correlations with measures of racial attitudes
Our measure of help for white nationalism bears some similarities with different established measures of racial attitudes developed by students in political science, sociology and psychology23,57,58,59,60. We discovered our measure to be most strongly empirically correlated with two of those established constructs (in research 3; see Prolonged Knowledge Desk 4 and Supplementary Info D). Our measure’s specification that white nationalists imagine white individuals ought to “maintain extra political and financial energy than different teams” and that “white tradition is superior to all different cultures” finds widespread floor with components of the white id battery23 mentioned above (Pearson’s r = 0.40 with our measure). Our measure’s inclusion of the concepts that white nationalists attest that white persons are “underneath risk” and will “preserve their majority within the US” sounds some themes much like these in “nice substitute concept”59 about immigration (r = 0.31). We discovered weaker, however nonetheless optimistic, relationships between white nationalism and ‘old style racism’60 (r = 0.26); racial resentment58 (r = 0.25); and denial of white privilege57 (r = 0.15), suggesting that we’re measuring a phenomenon adjoining to, however crucially distinct from, these established constructs.
Investigating upward bias
Estimates of low propensity attitudes might be artificially inflated by various elements. We explored the vulnerability of our prevalence estimates to upward bias by (1) the responses of inattentive contributors, (2) acquiescence bias and (3) priming results.
Inattentive respondents who reply questions in a random vogue can inflate estimates of low-propensity beliefs40. The distributors with which we contracted to manage research 1, 2 and three all used various methods to determine and take away inattentive respondents from their samples. To additional tackle this concern, we re-analysed information from research 1 to find out the ceteris paribus relationship between the period of time respondents took to finish the survey (which earlier work has proven is correlated with attentiveness41,61) and help for white nationalism after controlling for the predictors described on this article. The evaluation yielded estimates sturdy to inattentiveness that have been solely barely decrease (Supplementary Info E). The brevity of our survey in research 2 prohibited conducting a response-time evaluation with these information. In research 3, no relationship was discovered between response time and help for white nationalism (Supplementary Info E).
We additionally investigated whether or not our sure–no survey merchandise about supporting the white nationalist motion might be topic to acquiescence bias—that’s, the tendency to agree with statements in surveys no matter precise beliefs. Research 3 featured an experiment really useful by political methodologists62, during which, after being supplied with the outline of white nationalist beliefs, half of respondents have been randomly assigned our authentic query (“Are you a supporter of the white nationalist motion?”) and the opposite half have been requested a model keyed in the wrong way (“Are you an opponent of the white nationalist motion?”). This experiment discovered no proof that prevalence estimates from our measure are inflated by acquiescence bias. Additional analyses counsel that outcomes from research 3 relating to acquiescence bias are prone to generalize to different samples no matter their respondents’ stage of attentiveness (Supplementary Info F).
A closing concern is that prevalence estimates from research 1 might have been biased upward by priming results63, as a result of on this research our measure of white nationalist help was positioned on the finish of a survey that contained an intensive collection of questions on racial attitudes. Research 3 investigated this concern with a question-order experiment during which half of contributors have been randomly assigned to reply a query about their help for white nationalism earlier than responding to any of the opposite objects within the survey about racial attitudes. The opposite half was assigned to do that on the conclusion of the survey, which included a number of batteries of things associated to racial attitudes, together with white id, racial resentment and ‘old style racism’. As proven in Supplementary Info F, this experiment discovered no proof that priming results inflated prevalence estimates.
Insignificant outcomes and proof in help of the null
On this work we report a number of statistical exams that yield insignificant estimates: they can not reject the null speculation that the affiliation between a predictor (or an experimental therapy) and help for white nationalism is zero. As failure to reject the null doesn’t essentially suggest proof in help of the null itself, we additional characterize these findings to establish whether or not such proof is current. We do that in one in all two methods, relying on the character of the statistical take a look at.
The place a single predictor—an experimental therapy indicator or regression coefficient—of help for white nationalism is discovered to be statistically insignificant, we conduct an equivalence take a look at to find out whether or not the coefficient is sufficiently small in magnitude to be substantively negligible64. We outline a therapy impact or ceteris paribus affiliation of two.5 pp as our benchmark of substantively significant magnitude. This threshold was not preregistered, however was set earlier than conducting the equivalence exams. It was chosen for consistency with the roughly 2.5 pp minimal detectable impact (at 80% energy) within the experiment performed in research 2. By this specification, ceteris paribus associations falling throughout the vary of −2.5 to +2.5 pp are thought of negligible. Our equivalence exams use two one-sided exams to first decide whether or not the true affiliation is larger than the decrease sure of −2.5 pp after which to find out whether or not the affiliation is decrease than the higher sure of +2.5 pp. Solely when each one-sided exams reject their respective null hypotheses can we conclude that the estimated affiliation is statistically equal to zero inside our prespecified margin, and the equivalence take a look at has handed. In any other case, we conclude that the information don’t present adequate proof to determine this equivalence, and the equivalence take a look at has failed. We report the result of every equivalence take a look at and its corresponding interpretation.
The place a categorical predictor of help for white nationalism is discovered to be statistically insignificant in a a number of regression mannequin, we conduct a Bayesian info criterion (BIC)-based mannequin comparability to find out whether or not together with this predictor meaningfully improves the match of the mannequin65. We calculate the distinction between the BIC statistic of the choice mannequin that features the predictor (BICA) and that of the null mannequin (BIC0) and report ΔBIC ≡ BICA – BIC0. For every take a look at, we report ΔBIC and the corresponding power of proof in favour of the null mannequin, adopting typical requirements during which ΔBIC of larger than about 2, 6 and 10 correspond to (respectively) roughly optimistic, robust and really robust Bayes-factor proof in favour of the null mannequin.
Ethics assertion
The research protocols have been accepted by the NYU Institutional Overview Board. Research 1 was accepted underneath exempt evaluate on 20 August 2021 (IRB-FY2021-4955). Research 2 was accepted underneath an expedited evaluate on 8 Could 2024; research 3 was accepted with a modification to this protocol underneath an expedited evaluate on 4 November 2024 (IRB-FY2024-8846). Analysis was carried out in accordance with related tips and laws. Knowledgeable consent was obtained from all contributors.
Reporting abstract
Additional info on analysis design is offered within the Nature Portfolio Reporting Abstract linked to this text.
