It was about a year ago when Fox News’s Tucker Carlson first eagerly ripped off the mask.

“I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest for the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” he said in April 2021. “But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually.”

This was an explicit evocation of a line of argument, once confined to the right-wing, white nationalist fringe, called “great replacement theory.” The idea, as Carlson makes clear, is not simply that immigration to the United States could reshape American politics but that some cadre of elites is intentionally encouraging that to happen. That there was a sinister plan to literally “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants.

Despite Carlson’s characteristic insistence about his own honesty, this is not what is happening. But the idea soon spread on the political right, first from one member of Congress — Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), one of Donald Trump’s allies in his bid to overturn the 2020 election — and then to Republicans more broadly. The idea that there was a plan to swap out native-born Americans with immigrants became increasingly taken for granted on the right.

Last December, the Associated Press and NORC conducted a large national poll examining conspiratorial ideas including this one. They found that nearly half of Republicans agree to at least some extent with the idea that there’s a deliberate intent to “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants.

The AP-NORC poll included several other questions related to the idea. They asked whether respondents were concerned about native-born Americans losing economic, political and cultural influence as the number of immigrants increased and whether they were concerned that the system under which elections are conducted discriminates against White Americans.

About 3 in 10 Americans overall agreed with the idea that intentional replacement was occurring or that native-born Americans were losing influence. About 1 in 5 agreed that the election system discriminated against Whites. In each case, though, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express agreement or concern.

The pollsters also asked respondents what cable news channel they preferred. As might be expected, those who preferred Fox News were more likely than Americans overall or than those who preferred CNN or MSNBC to agree with the replacement theory idea. Three in 10 of those who prefer Fox News held the agree/concerned positions on the first two questions above. Among those who watched cable news closer to the right-wing fringe — One America News and Newsmax — the figure was 45 percent.

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