White Americans who regularly get their political news from Fox News have much higher levels of support for the Great Replacement Theory than those who don’t watch Fox News. By tracking individual viewers over time, researchers found that increases in viewership of certain television shows on this network coincided with increased belief in this conspiracy theory. These findings were published in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics.
The Great Replacement Theory is a xenophobic framework with origins in French right-wing political thought. The paper proposes that powerful elites are intentionally relaxing immigration policies to flood the United States with foreigners. Supporters believe these illegal immigrants serve as a docile voting bloc to keep progressive elites in power indefinitely. The theory argues that this process will ultimately displace native-born white citizens and strip them of their political, economic, and cultural superiority.
Historically, these demographic concerns existed isolated in the obscure realms of political discourse, largely confined to extremist websites. In recent years, prominent conservative figures have brought these concepts out of the shadows and straight into the mainstream. Prominent politicians and major conservative media figures have publicly endorsed variations of this theory to their millions of followers.
This idea is regularly promoted on major cable news networks and reaches large audiences every day. The specific conservative news programs discussed in the study include those hosted by celebrities such as Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters. The study authors also highlight previous extensive commentary on demographic turnover by Tucker Carlson, who hosted one of the most-watched cable news shows on television until he left the company.
According to the research paper, scholars note that individuals who espouse these beliefs are also more likely to support violence as a political tool. The perpetrators of several mass shootings targeting minorities in the United States have cited this theory in their books. Because ideologies often coexist with acts of violence, understanding how beliefs spread is of great interest to social scientists.
To understand why these ideas resonate with the public, scholars turn to intergroup conflict theory. This psychological framework suggests that when a socially dominant group perceives a threat to its historical power or resources from an outside group, its members become fearful and seek to regain control. Stories of elite intrigue provide anxious people with a convenient explanation for the nation’s changing demographics. It provides a specific villain and target for their anxieties about the cultural changes brought about by widespread immigration.
Scholars who study public opinion also theorize that the public relies heavily on prominent political leaders to understand complex topics. Immigration policy involves a complex global economy, legal nuances, and unfamiliar demographic data. When people are overwhelmed by the complexity of public policy, they resort to mental shortcuts. Rather than expending cognitive energy studying legal frameworks and border-grazing statistics, voters simply adopt the interpretations offered by group leaders.
Immigration policy is so abstract that ordinary people tend to adopt the perspectives of commentators they already trust to guide their political attitudes. If a trusted television host repeatedly warns that a particular foreign group poses an existential threat to the nation, loyal viewers will naturally incorporate that warning into their worldview. This dynamic explains why messages from trusted media sources powerfully shape voter behavior.
Jesse Rose, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led a team of researchers to investigate this phenomenon. They specifically focused on the influence of conservative media on white public opinion regarding demographic changes. The research team wanted to determine whether regular exposure to Fox News was correlated with someone accepting a replacement conspiracy. They aimed not just to take a single picture of public opinion, but to observe how individual minds evolve over the course of several months.
The researchers tested their questions using information from a large national survey of American adults. They focused on responses from more than 1,000 white people who were sampled in the summer of 2024 and again in the summer of 2025. Collecting survey responses from the exact same individuals over two different time periods is known among researchers as panel data. This structure allows researchers to track changes in individual attitudes rather than just looking at societal averages.
To measure belief in conspiracy theories, the survey asked respondents to rate their agreement with three statements on a five-point scale. The first statement proposed that immigrants invade and colonize the country. Second, he stated that native-born Americans are losing economic, political, and cultural influence due to the growing immigrant population. A third claimed that secret agents were actively working to replace foreigners with real Americans.
Participants also self-reported their private media consumption habits. They indicated whether they regularly watched a particular cable news network. Additionally, they specified exactly which popular daytime and prime-time shows on the networks they watched at least once a month. The researchers combined these responses to create a detailed picture of individual television news consumption.
Survey responses revealed the characteristics of the modern American electorate. Researchers found widespread support for conspiracy theories among the general white adult population. About half of white respondents somewhat agreed that mainland-born citizens are losing influence because of immigration. More than a third agreed that secret organizations intend to completely replace real Americans.
Levels of agreement were significantly higher when network viewers were separated. Almost two-thirds of the network’s regular viewers agreed that immigrants are invading and colonizing this country. More than three-quarters of these conservative TV viewers believed that native-born Americans were actively losing cultural and political influence.
The team ran statistical models to isolate specific effects of the network. They adjusted their calculations to account for a variety of other factors that significantly shape political views. The researchers asked respondents about their age, gender identity, household income bracket, and highest level of schooling completed. To understand the role of racial bias, survey questions asked respondents to express their attitudes toward various demographic minority groups.
Even when these diverse variables were removed, monitoring the network remained strongly associated with support for a conspiracy. Just watching the channel from time to time increased support for the alternative. Viewing a variety of specific shows on the network led to even stronger support. The data shows that having a higher income makes you less likely to accept a conspiracy, while having a conservative ideology makes you more likely to accept a conspiracy.
The most rigorous tests of the hypotheses came from mathematical methods applied to panel data. Researchers directly compared each participant to their own past survey responses. This mathematical approach eliminates the influence of persistent personal characteristics and closely observes changes in an individual’s mind over a period of time.
Through this rigorous statistical analysis, the research team found a highly consistent pattern. People who increased the number of conservative television programs they watched between the first and second study periods also increased their overall support for conspiracy theories. Because this particular model controls for individuals’ baseline and pre-existing political leanings, the authors believe this is strong evidence that monitoring networks actively shapes these particular attitudes.
“Our findings provide evidence of Fox News’ continued influence in shaping the contours of public opinion and political behavior and help us better understand the origins and relative popularity of GRT attitudes among white Americans,” the authors write in their report.
This study has some recognized limitations regarding its observational design. The authors note that the study relied entirely on observed findings rather than strictly controlled laboratory conditions. Repeated surveys of the exact same individuals can help establish a solid timeline of events, but observational survey data alone cannot provide absolute evidence of cause and effect. The researchers suggest that future research should use experimental equipment to examine how direct exposure to specific media clips changes viewers’ immediate psychological mindsets.
Future research should also examine other underlying factors that generate these beliefs among the public. The research team recommends investigating psychological characteristics such as a group dominance mindset. They point out that future research should also critically examine the popularity of these conspiracy theories among different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Expanding the focus beyond just white voters helps political analysts map the rapidly changing landscape of American politics.
The study, “Follow the Fox? Elite Influence and White Support for the Great Replacement Theory,” was authored by Jesse Rhodes, Seth Goldman, Tatishe Mavovosi Nteta, Adam Aichen, Sabrina Lapcheske, Linda Tropp, Efrén Pérez, and Yuen Huo.
