Back in September, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat for calling Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.” Later, Clinton backed off those remarks saying they were “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying “half of them are deplorable.” But now, thanks to Twitter, we have the exact percentage of Trump supporters who are deplorable and Clinton wasn’t far off.
Demographics Pro analyzed 10,000 random Donald Trump supporters on Twitter and matched those accounts with ten leading white nationalist accounts, including former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke and Ann Kelly from the White Genocide Project. What researchers found was staggering. 3,549 Trump followers also followed at least one white nationalist account—a whopping 35.5 percent of supporters. In comparison, out of 10,000 randomly-sampled Clinton supporters, only 16 followed a white nationalist.
Although the Trump campaign has repeatedly said they’re not actively courting the support of white nationalists, the campaign’s rhetoric has received praise and backing from groups such as the American Nazi Party, prominent former Ku Klux Klansmen, and at least 15 people affiliated with organizations defined as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Trump has earned their support by his staunch anti-immigrant stances, Islamophobic policies, retweeting of alt-right propaganda, and refusal to disavow David Duke on CNN. Trump may say he’s not actively pining for white nationalist support, but after earning their endorsements, he hasn’t exactly changed his rhetoric either.
