One important psychological consequence of racial wealth inequality is that it contributes to societal stereotypes that link race with socioeconomic status (SES). Americans, regardless of their own race\/ethnicity, tend to assume White people are wealthy and that Black and Latinx people are poor (Brown-Iannuzzi et al., 2019; Zou & Cheryan, 2017). As a result of assuming that most White people are wealthy, many White Americans may feel like they are \u201cfalling behind\u201d their racial group and not living up to the SES stereotype of White people (Cooley et al., 2021). This feeling of \u201cfalling behind\u201d may be further compounded by between-group<\/em> status comparisons\u2014namely, White Americans\u2019 beliefs about where they stand in the SES hierarchy relative to other racial\/ethnic groups. In particular, some White Americans may feel like they are in, or close to, \u201clast place\u201d\u2014worse off than all other racial\/ethnic groups, including their own. This perceived position (i.e., being \u201clast place\u201d) within the racial\/ethnic SES hierarchy may draw some White Americans to alt-right worldviews given that such ideology aims to elevate the status of White Americans (Hartzell, 2018). Of note, we use \u201calt-right ideology\u201d and \u201calt-right\u201d to reference belief systems and candidates who center White nationalism and thus support\/endorse policies that favor \u201cWhite interests\u201d (Forscher & Kteily, 2020; Hawley, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the present paper, we test how the context of high racial economic inequality in the U.S.\u2014inequality that disproportionately benefits White Americans (vs. most other racial\/ethnic groups)\u2014may contribute to a sense of despondency among some White Americans. Further, we predict that White Americans who feel they are in \u201clast place\u201d\u2014worse off compared to all other racial\/ethnic groups, including their own\u2014may be particularly likely to support alt-right ideology, DEI bans<\/a>, and may have been most likely to vote for President Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent research suggests that, when forming a sense of their subjective status, White Americans most often compare their own status within<\/em> their racial group (i.e., to other White people; Caluori et al., 2024; Cooley et al., 2021). Due to race\/class stereotypes that associate wealth with White people (e.g., Brown-Iannuzzi et al., 2019), this may lead many White Americans to make upward status comparisons with others from their racial group; and, comparing oneself to others who are perceived as better off can negatively impact psychological well-being (Diel et al., 2025; Festinger, 1954). Consistent with this reasoning, prior work using representative quota samples of non-Hispanic, White Americans found that, on average, White Americans perceive themselves to be worse-off in the SES hierarchy than most other White Americans (Caluori et al., 2024; Cooley et al., 2021). Moreover, these status perceptions (controlling for the influence of objective status), predicted decreased positive emotions at a second future time point, which then predicted worse well-being at a third future time point (Caluori et al., 2024).\u00a0These findings suggest that because White people are often stereotyped to be wealthy, the average White American, regardless of their objective status, may feel<\/em> like they are falling behind\u2014and this subjective experience has meaningful emotional consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although White Americans may primarily compare their status to others within their own racial group, they are also likely to evaluate their status through between-group<\/em> comparisons (Bobo & Hutchings, 1996; Brown-Iannuzzi et al., 2025; Cooley et al., 2025). Racially\/ethnically minoritized groups (e.g., Black and Latinx Americans) are often stereotyped as poorer than most White Americans (e.g., Brown-Iannuzzi et al., 2019; Zou & Cheryan, 2017). Blumer\u2019s Group Position Theory (1958) suggests that prejudice is exacerbated when White Americans feel their superior position is being challenged. Further, Bobo and Hutchings (1996) extend this model to suggest that the relative position of the group who is doing the challenging also influences the degree of intergroup threat. Extending from these models, we suggest that the current economic climate may lead some White Americans to feel as if their individual position in the economic hierarchy is challenged both by feeling they are \u201cworse off\u201d than other White people and <\/em>that other racial\/ethnic groups may be superseding them (or close to it) in status as a result of perceived racial progress (Kraus et al., 2019; Norton & Sommers, 2011). This perception of precarious positionality both within<\/em> and between<\/em> racial groups may activate fears of being in \u201clast place\u201d (i.e., last place aversion<\/em>; Kuziemko et al., 2014). So, while prior work has documented that feelings of \u201cfalling behind\u201d other White people has predictable emotional\/well-being consequences for White Americans, we propose that the simultaneous perception that one is being passed by, or close to being passed by, all other racial groups (i.e., feeling both low within-group<\/em> and low between-group<\/em> status) is likely to have distinct consequences for political attitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For White Americans who feel like they are in \u201clast place\u201d (or close to it), their perceived low status conflicts with stereotypes that White people are wealthy, while intergroup competition is also perceived to be high. This conflict may produce a feeling among those White Americans that they are entitled to be wealthier (Kunst & Obaidi, 2020), that the current system is not attuned to their needs, and that they need a candidate who focuses on their plight as White people (Jardina, 2019; Major et al., 2018). Due to the simultaneous perception that other racial groups are passing them, or close to passing them, in status, these individuals are likely to see policies that aim to uplift racial minorities, such as DEI-related policies, to be personally harmful and unjust. As such, we anticipate that White Americans who feel like they are in \u201clast place\u201d (or close to it) will be particularly likely to support worldviews and ideology that align with the alt-right including White nationalism, anti-government beliefs (due to the perception that the government does not currently prioritize White Americans\u2019 best interests), and support for policies that ban DEI initiatives (Hartzell, 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Previous work lends evidence to this hypothesis (Cooley et al., 2024). Across two large representative quota samples, collected in spring\/summer 2023, when non-Hispanic, White Americans were asked to rank the SES of their own racial group, other racial groups, and themselves as individuals, about 10% of each sample fell into a latent profile that reflected a tendency to feel worst-off, falling behind all racial groups (including their own; Cooley et al., 2024). On average, participants who fell in this \u201clast place\u201d profile, compared to the other White Americans in the sample, were the most likely to support alt-right ideology. These effects were robust to controlling for objective indicators of SES (income and education), as well as participants\u2019 conservatism, age, and gender. Importantly, \u201clast place\u201d White Americans were not objectively<\/em> the lowest status people in these samples. This suggests that White Americans\u2019 subjective feelings about their position in the racial economic hierarchy are not simply a reflection of objective experiences of wealth or poverty. Instead, we reason that these perceptions may stem from the current sociopolitical climate around Whiteness in the U.S. In the present work, we replicate and extend upon these findings in the context of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, combined with a longitudinal design, to assess the novel outcomes of differential candidate support and voting behavior as the election nears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, many White working-class voters interpreted the election of the United States\u2019 first Black President to be a de-prioritization of their needs and an empowerment of minority groups<\/a> at their expense, deepening divides on both racial and party lines (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019; Tesler, 2020). Likewise, the great recession during Obama\u2019s presidency led some White Americans to scapegoat Black Americans for their own economic plight, putting into motion a narrative that people of color are helped by the federal government at White Americans\u2019 expense (McKenzie, 2014). The narrative of White Americans being \u201cleft behind\u201d has gained traction in recent years, as reflected by increasingly overt themes of economic displacement, perceived loss of status, and diminishing opportunities for White Americans (Hochschild, 2016; Jardina, 2019; McKenzie, 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n These \u201cleft behind\u201d narratives were also prominent in the campaigning of current President Donald Trump during the 2016, 2020, and 2024 U.S. presidential elections (Goethals, 2018). Indeed, some have theorized that the populist messaging that Trump campaigned with in 2016 was internalized by some White voters as speaking to their racial group and contributed to Donald Trump\u2019s success in the 2016 presidential election by acknowledging the status threat many White voters were feeling (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019; Knowles & Tropp 2018; Mutz, 2018). If so, it follows that White Americans who are most drawn to Trump\u2019s populist rhetoric in 2024 may be those who feel subjectively that they are in, or close to, \u201clast place\u201d\u2014 passed by, or close to being passed by, both stereotypically high-status groups (i.e., White and Asian Americans), and racially marginalized groups (e.g., Black and Hispanic Americans) within the SES hierarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, the \u201cleft behind\u201d rhetoric has been reflected in policy relevant to diversity, equity and inclusion, in particular (DEI; Hochschild, 2016). President Trump\u2019s 1776 commission\/report during his first term (Executive Order, 2020), as well as his 2024 campaign platform (Wendling, 2025), foreshadowed his subsequent flurry of executive orders banning DEI efforts after his 2025 inauguration. Thus, anticipating large-scale DEI bans if Trump were to win the election, we also examined whether non-Hispanic, White Americans who feel the threat of being (or soon becoming) \u201clast place\u201d may also be those who are most supportive of DEI bans. We reasoned that for these White Americans, DEI policies may seem not only unnecessary, but personally harmful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, it is an open question as to how subjective perceptions of feeling \u201clast place\u201d (or close to it) may relate to political outcomes over time, and during times of political transitions, such as a U.S. presidential election. One possibility is that the relationship between feeling \u201clast place\u201d and support for alt-right ideology and candidates like Donald Trump becomes stronger as the election nears due to the increased salience of candidates\u2019 political rhetoric as the election season peaks. However, it is also possible that in a climate of extreme political polarization<\/a>, such as in the contemporary U.S., the behavior of political candidates (or other exogenous shocks) would have to be relatively extreme to shift belief systems appreciably (Axelrod et al., 2021). Such a possibility would predict a relative stability of the relationship between feeling \u201clast place\u201d and support for alt-right ideology, Donald Trump, and voting behavior as the election nears. Through a longitudinal design, over the span of several months and including timepoints both before and after the election, we tested these possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The present study has three key hypotheses. First, we predicted that there would be a distinct group of White Americans who feel \u201clast place,\u201d and that such a perception, controlling for objective status, would predict the highest support for alt-right ideology and candidates with platforms that align with alt-right worldviews. This first prediction represents a replication of Cooley et al. (2024), while also extending those findings to a novel longitudinal design and during a consequential point in U.S. history (a presidential election). Second, testing a novel hypothesis, we predicted that these \u201clast place\u201d White Americans would be most supportive of policies that aim to ban DEI initiatives and would report the strongest support for President Trump leading up to the election, as well as the highest proportion of votes ultimately cast for President Trump. Finally, given our longitudinal design we further tested the novel question of whether these associations increased in strength as the election neared; or, conversely, whether they were relatively stable, perhaps due to strong political polarization undermining the influence of exogenous shocks (Axelrod et al., 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To test these hypotheses, we conducted a five-wave longitudinal study, with three waves before the 2024 U.S. presidential election and two waves after the election, launched between September 4th, 2024 and November 20th, 2024.[1]<\/a><\/sup> At each time point, non-Hispanic, White Americans living in the United States were asked to complete a survey consisting of a measure of within- and between-group subjective status (i.e., our key predictor; see Figure 1) as well as support for alt-right ideology; support for an unnamed, purportedly-local candidate with a platform that aligned with alt-right worldviews; support for DEI bans; and voting intentions and behavior in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. To assess patterns of responses to the within- and between-group measure of subjective status, and generate subjective status profiles\u2014such as the hypothesized \u201clast place\u201d profile\u2014we chose latent profile analysis (LPA) for several reasons. First, the underlying process of LPA is much like factor analysis, except instead of clustering items from a scale based on shared characteristics, individuals in a sample are clustered based on shared patterns of responding. Thus, LPA is a powerful, person-centered approach to data analysis that is particularly relevant to understanding holistic patterns of responses such as those captured by the within- and between-group subjective status measure of focus here. LPA has the additional benefit that it moves beyond the often-critiqued method of testing 2- and 3-way interactions between variables which requires exceedingly (and often prohibitively) large sample sizes to adequately detect effects, and these types of interactions are notoriously difficult to replicate (e.g., Giner-Sorolla et al., 2024). Finally, we were replicating and extending upon prior work that used this analysis strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWithin-Group Status Comparisons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Between-Group Status Comparisons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Relationship Between Feeling in \u201cLast Place\u201d and Political Attitudes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLast-Place\u201d Political Rhetoric<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Opposition to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Relationships Between Feeling \u201cLast Place\u201d and Trump Support Over the 2024 U.S. Election<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Overview of Longitudinal Study<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Methods<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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