Do you include that sort of thing, or really just traditional religions?

Yeah, so two responses to that.

So actually, we were among the first polling organizations to actually quantify QAnon.

And so we were asking questions about the role of political violence, the idea that, you know, things are so off base, you know, we need a political ruler who's willing to break the rules.

But we had a question really asking Americans about the extent to which they believe that America was run, you know, business and government by satanic pedophiles, right? This is a literal verbatim question we asked, which I never thought as a pollster I'd be asking.

But we took it from, you know, our research team went to 4chan chats and kind of found the language that was constantly being used.

And so we found that a not insignificant portion of Americans back in 2011 really kind of subscribed to this, you know, obviously this theory that is nonsense.

Is that a big part of the story here? Because that just seems so entwined with religion.

Do you see in the data how people are using different ideas of democracy that show up in the questions you ask?

You know, I think that when you talk about everyone, I think, has a general conception that democracy is important.

We tend to sometimes think that, especially on the right, that if an outcome is not what they like, it's undemocratic by definition.

That, of course, has been hastened by a political leader, Donald Trump, who repeatedly says that the election was stolen from him.

And so now we know that most Republicans think that the 2020 election, for example, was stolen from him.

de lui.

Et c'est une notion très illibérale, un petit l, que vous avez quelqu'un qui a perdu une élection claire et claire, en disant que, vous savez, qu'il a perdu cette race.

And the more that women leave Christianity, the more it reinforces, at least to their own audiences, these far-right Christian arguments that say, and therefore we need to eliminate women voting so we can get the women back in line.

And then as you get further and further from these major issues, like younger people today, I don't know that they totally understand what has happened in order to get them to the place where they can endlessly scroll through TikTok or have a platform to speak their voice.

I think that's a good point.

You know, I think the last time in modern history where we had a national unifying experience is 9-11.

You know, and if you think about younger people in particular, you know, Gen Z, for example, you know, was not really around or has a memory of that.

So there's no sense of a collective, you know, notion or event bringing us together in ways maybe historically that we've had.

I think one finding in particular is really interesting and germane here.

We asked Americans about whether they think the American dream, if you work hard, you'll get ahead still holds true.

So how do we get back to that point?

And then as you get further and further from these major issues, like younger people today, I don't know that they totally understand what has happened in order to get them to the place where they can endlessly scroll through TikTok or have a platform to speak their voice.

I think that's a good point.

You know, I think the last time in modern history where we had a national unifying experience is 9-11.

You know, and if you think about younger people in particular, you know, Gen Z, for example, you know, was not really around or has a memory of that.

So there's no sense of a collective, you know, notion or event bringing us together in ways maybe historically that we've had.

I think one finding in particular is really interesting and germane here.

We asked Americans about whether they think the American dream, if you work hard, you'll get ahead still holds true.

So how do we get back to that point?

So Melissa, how unusual is this sort of rhetoric when it comes to an administration official explaining war objectives?

I think it's very unusual, but I think it's more typical of Pete Hegseth, who has really bought his Christian nationalist views into his time as office as defense secretary.

Robbie, did you want to add?

What are the most striking political moves you've seen, Melissa, with this administration? that aligns with those values.

Absolutely.

I would also point out, as you noted in our analysis, we find that about a third of Americans have Christian nationalist views.

But that also means about two-thirds of Americans reject those views.

So I think that's important to bear in mind.

Mm-hmm.

Um, we see by and large, those folks are far more likely to endorse Christian nationalist views.

In fact, if you're watching a regular programming of, of Newsmax, we find that about 65%, almost two-thirds of those viewers subscribe to Christian nationalist views.

And so it's always interesting to think, though, do they develop those views because they're watching it, or do they, maybe they've turned the news on and embrace those sorts of things? It's hard to tease that direction of causality is what I think how political scientists, social scientists would look at it in terms of public opinion research.

But I do know that it's certainly reinforcing, and if anything, I-The power of news media is so profound because even if you are a devout Christian going to church regularly, doing Bible study, the odds are that if you attend a church that espouses Christian nationalist views, you're gonna be home watching news media probably more often than you're in church.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

[crowd cheers] Pataday, bring it on.

I- in a way with those numbers, you're kind of delineating the voters who are potentially genuinely authoritarian or have real authoritarian sympathies, right? Can you talk about that pool of voters? Who are they?

Yeah, and so I would also recommend last fall, we did a very path-breaking survey, uh, release, uh, looking at the underpinnings of authoritarianism within the US population, right? And so not surprisingly, Christian na- nationalist adherents, uh, are the strongest in terms, in terms of support for a strongman, and so Christian nationalists adherents are folks who believe that America was founded and should remain a Christian nation, um, and they believe that Christians should have preferential treatment, like, strongly believe this, right? And if you believe that God has ordained you to be here, and if you believe that God ordains a certain design of how government should be run, uh, the order of, you know, how society should be set up hierarchically, all those sorts of things, then the Constitution and, uh, due process and the norms of a democracy are far less important.

And so those kinds of individuals are among the most, uh, I think strongest adherents of, uh, s- they're the, they're among the most strongest supporters of Donald Trump.

We find that pretty, pretty consistently.

And of course, you know, I think it's, uh, not a coincidence that a lot of Trump's agenda, not all of it certainly, uh, but a lot of it's driven by Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation which is a longstanding conservative, uh, organization.

Um, so from pro-natalist policies to banning reproductive rights to getting rid of, you know, the rights of transgender Americans to getting rid of DEI initiatives, all of these are of accord that kind of hearken back to, um, some Christian nationalist viewpoints.

And so I'm not surprised at all throughout the report you'll see the strongest supporters for Trump, for his policies and administration really come from Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalist views.

What do you make of that?