TO CALL the white-nationalist rally at Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, on August 12th a damp squib would be an insult to wet explosives. Jason Kessler, the rally’s organiser, told the National Park Service he expected 400 compatriots. Around two dozen showed up—separated from a vastly larger group of counter-protesters by a police escort. Some counter-protesters went home early because, as one explained to Vox’s German Lopez, there “aren’t enough Nazis to troll”.

Why did so few white nationalists show up? Poor organisation, perhaps. Or perhaps being alt-right just doesn’t have the same appeal it once did. In 2015 and 2016 a particular kind of contrarian young man could persuade himself there was something edgy and satisfying about spouting racist bile online: it annoyed liberals, and liberals held the presidency and defined the culture. But liberals are now well out of power. The alt-right’s favourite candidate holds the presidency, and as generations of politicos have learned, governing is harder, duller and less gratifying than shouting from the sidelines in opposition.

Perhaps most important, however, is that the move from talking tough online to showing one’s face in the physical world had actual consequences. Some of the attendees at last year’s rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, lost their jobs and were publicly shamed; others faced lawsuits. Tech firms booted and shunned them.

On the eve of the march, George Hawley, a political scientist at the University of Alabama, dug into the demography of white nationalists—in particular, into the thesis advanced by Angela Nagle, the author of a book about the alt-right, that the decline of monogamy and traditional marriage has led low-status men to assert themselves through white-supremacist beliefs.

Mr Hawley posited three factors linking adherents of racist movements: a strong sense of white identity, belief in the importance of white solidarity and a sense of white victimisation. In 2016 the American National Election Survey asked respondents three revealing questions: on a five-point scale, they were to indicate how important race is to their identity, how important they think it is that “whites work together to change laws that are unfair to whites,” and how much discrimination they think whites face in America. Among the survey’s 3,038 non-Hispanic white respondents, around 28% thought being white was “very” or “extremely important” to their identity; around 38% “expressed strong feelings of white solidarity”; and around 27% believed whites suffered a meaningful amount of discrimination.

Just 6% thought all three things simultaneously—in roughly equal proportions of childless and with-child, and married and never-married respondents, which would seem to cast doubt on Ms Nagle’s argument. But more than 10% of divorced non-Hispanic whites agreed strongly with all three propositions—more than twice as many as married, never-married and with-children respondents. The causal connection is unclear: does getting divorced make people likelier to harbour angry racial resentments, or do those who have such feelings tend to get divorced?

Large gaps exist for education and income level—the less educated and less well-paid are likelier to believe all three things—as well as for political-party affiliation (nearly 6% of Republicans, but just over 4% of Democrats). A slightly larger share of white women than men and a notably larger share of regular than occasional churchgoers identify strongly with white identity, solidarity and feeling discriminated against. But the only one of Mr Hawley’s demographic subgroups to break 10% were divorced people. Mr Hawley thus posits that “encouraging more marriage will likely not be effective [at deterring participation in white-identity politics], but strengthening marriages and discouraging marriage dissolution may be helpful.” Of course, it could also mean pressing some people to remain married to white supremacists.