GoKawiilStudy 1 (survey fielded in 2021; YouGov CES)
We fielded this extensive survey to N = 3,227 non-Hispanic white people in November 2021 as part of the CES—a widely used source of data in peer-reviewed political science research on US public opinion. The CES’s in-depth Common Content questionnaire and respondent geocodes permit documentation of the demographic and political predictors of support for white nationalism and exploration of our theories. The CES was conducted on the web by the YouGov survey firm; respondents were selected from an opt-in panel using a sample matching and weighting methodology that yields estimates aiming to approximate those obtained from nationally representative probability samples of US adults37. This approach assumes that—conditional on the demographic variables used for weighting—panel participation is independent of the attitudes measured here. We note that this assumption cannot be directly verified, particularly for stigmatized political opinions and identities.
The CES is made up of modules with original questionnaires developed by teams of university-based researchers fielded to 1,000 respondents each. All respondents also respond to the CES Common Content questionnaire, which includes items about demographics, partisanship and vote choice, policy preferences, political knowledge and related topics.
We contracted with the CES to purchase questionnaire time for our study on five modules, which yielded a total of 5,000 respondents. Our questionnaire was fielded only to respondents who indicated they were white on the Common Content item about racial identity—a question that also included response choices of ‘Black’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Asian’, ‘Native American’, ‘Two or more races’, ‘Other’ and ‘Middle Eastern’. We further restrict our analysis to white people who answered ‘no’ to a subsequent CES question asking all those who did not indicate ‘Hispanic’ on the race item whether they identified as Hispanic or Latino. Our resulting sample (N = 3,227) aims to be representative of the US non-Hispanic white adult population, estimated by the Census Bureau at 161 million in 2021 (62.1% of all adults). Demographic, political and other relevant characteristics of our sample can be found in Supplementary Information B.
The entire questionnaire for study 1 may be found in Supplementary Information A. Here we provide sources and wording of key survey items discussed in the text.
Strength of white identity and support for white collective action
Adapted from items employed in previous work23,24. Items presented in random order.
Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements:
Being white is important to my identity.
White people in this country have a lot to be proud of.
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