White Americans’ Evaluations of the Alt-Right

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X231157398
• Author: Kevin K. Banda,John Cluverius
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(4) 435–442

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X231157398

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White Americans’Evaluations of the Alt-Right

Kevin K. Banda

1

and John Cluverius

2



Abstract

Citizens’perceptions of the alt-right are not well explored in political science. We view the alt-right as a successor of the Tea

Party movement. While the Tea Party described itself as organized around spending, the size of government, and the American

Constitution, examinations of the movement found that the unifying concerns of people who identif‌ied with it or viewed it

favorably were negative feelings about racial minorities and patriarchal views of gender roles. Using panel survey data, we show

that whites with higher levels of hostile sexism, racial resentment, perceptions of discrimination against whites, and who were

more favorable towards Donald Trump evaluated the alt-right movement more positively. We f‌ind no evidence that self-placed

ideology informed these evaluations. On the whole, latent cultural conservatism appears to inform evaluations of the relatively

unknown —at the time —alt-right movement.

Keywords

alt-right, racial resentment, hostile sexism, perceptions of discrimination

The alt-right has become a focusing movement of a resilient

and resurgent far-right in American politics (Hawley, 2017).

Studies of thealt-right mostly examine the elitelevel - that is to

say what peoplesteeped in the movementbelieve and how they

disseminate their beliefs (Main, 2018), prof‌iles of salient

members (Forscher, and Kteily 2020), or one aspect of their

cultural attitudes (Boehme, and Isom Scott2020). However, to

wield power in a democracy, politicalmovements must expand

conf‌licts (Schattschneider, 1960) and appeal to those outside

their cadre of supporters. While social scientists have exam-

ined the nature of the alt-right movement, there has been little

work on how American citizens —who do not care much

about or pay much attention to politics (Campbell et al., 1960;

Converse, 1962;Delli Carpini & Keeter 1996)—perceive of

the alt-right. What informs evaluations of the alt-right?

We view the alt-right as another iteration of far-right

politics in the United States. This more general movement

has existed in some form since the founding. Anti-change,

reactionary politics take many forms in American history

(Nash, 2014), but throughout them are the common position

that at the present (whatever time the present may be),

conditions for Black Americans and women are better than

they have been in the past and that therefore the current

grievances of those groups against individuals, institutions,

and society at large are illegitimate (Robin, 2011). Because of

this, we expect people who feel high levels of racial re-

sentment and hostile sexism —two measures of opinion

rooted in the legitimacy of these kinds of grievances —to

evaluate the alt-right movement more positively. We further

expect conservatives to view the movement more positively

because it is a right-leaning group, so spatial and social

considerations may make it appear sympathetic. Those who

think that white Americans face racially motivated dis-

crimination also ought to view the alt-right more positively

because the group’s rhetoric is consistent with this belief, as

should citizens with favorable views of Donald Trump, who

often spoke positively of the alt-right and related groups.

We test these expectations using a panel survey com-

missioned by the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group. We

focus on interviews conduced in late 2016 and early 2017.

1

We f‌ind evidence that racial resentment, hostile sexism,

perceptions of discrimination against whites, and Trump

favorability all positively correlate with evaluations of the alt-

right. Ideological conservatism, on the other hand, does not

appear to inform these affective evaluations.

These f‌indings have two major implications for the study

of far-right politics across the globe. They suggest that there is

a relationship between (1) group-based prejudices and (2) a

feeling that one’s own group is imperilled and affect towards

1

Department of Political Science, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

2

Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Chapel

Hill, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kevin K. Banda, Department of Political Science, Texas Tech University,

113 Holden Hall, Boston and Akron Streets, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA.

Email: kevin.banda@ttu.edu