New analysis shows strong correlation between support for Christian nationalism and favorable views of Trump, Republican representation in state legislatures.

WASHINGTON (February 17, 2026) — One year into the second Trump administration, a new national survey released today by PRRI examines support for Christian nationalism across all 50 states. Based on interviews with more than 22,000 adults conducted throughout 2025 as part of the PRRI American Values Atlas, the new study examines the connections between support for Christian nationalism and Trump favorability, partisanship, religion, media habits, and more.

At the national level, a majority of Republicans (56%) qualify as either Christian nationalism Adherents (21%) or Sympathizers (35%), compared with one in four independents (25%) and less than one in five Democrats (17%). Overall, roughly one-third of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents (11%) or Sympathizers (21%), compared with two-thirds who qualify as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (27%). These percentages largely have remained stable since PRRI first asked these questions in late 2022.

“For another year, our survey reveals the continued hold that Christian nationalism has on the Republican Party and its white evangelical base,” said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI. “While Americans overall reject this worldview by a margin of two to one, its dominance among these groups amplify it into an ongoing threat to our pluralistic democracy.”

The survey found that white Christians (46%) are more likely than Christians of color (39%), non-Christians (13%), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (10%) to qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers. White evangelical Protestants (67%) and Hispanic Protestants (54%) are the only two major religious groups in which a majority qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers.

Support for Christian nationalism is positively correlated with frequent religious behaviors: the majority of Americans who attend religious services weekly or more qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers (54%), compared with 39% of those who attend at least a few times a year and 20% of those who seldom or never attend religious services. This correlation holds among those who pray outside of religious services and those who read religious texts. Among Christians who attend religious services weekly or more, 56% qualify as Christian nationalism supporters.

Yet white Americans who attend religious services, pray, or read the Bible or other religious texts frequently are more likely than their Black and Hispanic counterparts to qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers.

Christian nationalism supporters hold more extreme views about immigrants.

Majorities of Christian nationalism Adherents (67%) and Sympathizers (53%) agree with the idea that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” compared with 32% of Skeptics and 8% of Rejecters. Additionally, majorities of Christian nationalism Adherents (61%) and Sympathizers (54%) support “the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons without due process.” In contrast, around one-third of Skeptics (34%) and one in ten Rejecters (11%) agree.

Melissa Deckman, Ph.D., CEO of PRRI, said, “Our new analysis demonstrates a strong relationship between the spread of Christian nationalist ideology and Republican representation in state legislatures, indicating which states are conditioned to pass policies endorsed by major Christian nationalist leaders.”

At the state level, Christian nationalist views predominate in the South and Midwest and are strongly correlated to both Trump favorability and Republican representation in state legislatures. 

The states with the highest levels of support for Christian nationalism —about half of their residents — are Arkansas (54%), Mississippi (52%), West Virginia (51%), Oklahoma (49%), and Wyoming (46%). The higher a state’s residents score on the Christian nationalism scale, the more likely they are to hold favorable views of Trump and have a larger proportion of Republican elected officials in their state legislature.

Among the other findings:

• Christian nationalism Adherents (30%) are more than twice as likely to agree that “true American Patriots may have to resort to violence” than Christian nationalism Skeptics (14%) and Rejecters (11%).
• Two-thirds of Americans who most trust far-right news sources qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents (34%) or Sympathizers (31%), as do a majority of those who most trust Fox News (18% Adherents and 37% Sympathizers).
• Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers are more likely than Skeptics and Rejecters to hold authoritarian views.
• Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers overwhelmingly view Trump as a strong leader, while Skeptics and Rejecters overwhelmingly view him as a dangerous dictator.
• Over four in ten Christian nationalism Adherents (44%) and one-third of Sympathizers (34%) say that mandatory vaccines for children should be illegal in all or most cases, compared with one in four Skeptics (25%) and one in ten Rejecters (11%).

Methodology

The survey was designed and conducted by PRRI. The survey was made possible through the generous support of the Wilbur & Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock. The survey was carried out among a random representative sample of 22,111 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states in the United States. Among those, 20,771 are part of Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel and an additional 1,340 were recruited by Ipsos using opt-in survey panels to increase the sample sizes in smaller states. Interviews were conducted online between February 28 and December 8, 2025. The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 0.87 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.7. 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 public policy.

#          #          #