Survey reveals Christian nationalism strongly linked to white evangelical and Republican party affiliation, red states, and support for Donald Trump
WASHINGTON (February 28, 2024)— As Donald Trump continues his march to become the Republican Party’s 2024 nominee for president, a new national survey released today by PRRI illuminates the important role Christian nationalism is playing in his primary successes. Throughout 2023, PRRI interviewed more than 22,000 adults on this topic as part of its American Values Atlas, providing — for the first time — the ability to estimate support for Christian nationalism in all 50 states.
At the national level, Christian nationalism is strongly linked to Republican Party affiliation, white evangelical Protestant affiliation, and higher church attendance.
Overall, three in ten Americans qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers. Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times as likely as Democrats (16%) to qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers.
There are only two major religious groups in which a majority qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers: white evangelical Protestants (66%) and Hispanic Protestants (55%), a group among whom seven in ten also identify as evangelical or born-again. Among Americans who attend religious services weekly or more, a majority (52%) are Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers, compared with 38% of those who attend a few times a year and 18% of those who seldom or never attend.
“Christian nationalism is a new term for an anti-democratic worldview that has been with us since the founding of our country — the idea that America was designated by God to be a Christian country where white Christians occupy the highest positions of power and laws are judged to be valid based on their particular interpretation of the Bible,” says Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI. “This survey illustrates how strongly this dangerous political theology is driving support for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and how thoroughly it has established itself as an ideological keystone in today’s Republican Party.”
At the state level, Christian nationalism is strongly linked to red states and 2020 vote for Trump.
The proportion of Americans who qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers differs considerably across states, ranging from lows of 17% in Oregon and 18% in Massachusetts to highs of 50% in both North Dakota and Mississippi. Nearly four in ten residents of red states qualify as Christian nationalists (14% Adherents and 24% Sympathizers), nearly twice the proportion of blue state residents who qualify as Christian nationalists (6% Adherents and 16% Sympathizers). Residents of the seven battleground states look nearly identical to the national average: 10% are Christian nationalism Adherents and 19% are Sympathizers.
At the state level, support for Christian nationalism is nearly perfectly correlated with vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. If the analysis is restricted to white Americans, the relationship between state-level support for Christian nationalism and 2020 vote for Trump becomes even stronger.
Christian nationalists are more likely than other Americans to see political struggles through the apocalyptic lens of revolution and to support political violence.
A majority of Christian nationalism Adherents (54%) and 45% of Sympathizers agree that, “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” compared with only 22% of Christian nationalism Skeptics and 7% of Rejecters.
Christian nationalists are also about twice as likely as other Americans to believe political violence may be justified. Nearly four in ten Christian nationalism Adherents (38%) and one-third of Sympathizers (33%) agree that, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country,” compared with only 17% of Skeptics and 7% of Rejecters. Support for political violence among Christian nationalism Sympathizers has gone up by 11 percentage points since 2022 (from 22% to 33%) while it has remained steady among all other groups.
While there is little variation in support for Christian nationalist beliefs by race or ethnicity alone, Christian nationalist beliefs produce divergent political outcomes by race, particularly among Black Americans.
Among white Americans and Hispanic Americans — but not among Black Americans — holding Christian nationalist beliefs is strongly correlated with Republican Party identity and support for Donald Trump. Black Americans who hold Christian nationalist beliefs are not significantly more likely than Black Americans overall to identify as Republican (8% vs. 5%), and they are only slightly more likely than Black Americans overall to hold favorable views of Trump (21% vs. 14%).
Methodology
The survey was designed and conducted by PRRI. The survey was made possible through the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Wilbur & Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock. The survey was carried out among a random representative sample of 22,465 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states in the United States and the District of Columbia. Among those, 20,799 are part of Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel and an additional 1,666 were recruited by Ipsos using opt-in survey panels to increase the sample sizes in smaller states. Interviews were conducted online between March 9 and December 7, 2023. The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 0.82 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.56. In addition to sampling error, surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects.
About PRRI
PRRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics.