America first?

At one of his recent rallies, Donald Trump said that he was a nationalist:  "Really, we’re not supposed to use that word.  You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!"  A New York Times story said that "Mr. Trump has enthusiastically embraced words and ideas that his predecessors shied away from," also mentioning "America First," which he has used repeatedly. 

Trump clearly thinks that the terms are popular among the general public, which seems plausible, but is it true?  I looked for survey questions about "nationalist" or "nationalism" but didn't find anything useful (most of the mentions involved references to "Nationalist China").  Then I tried "America first."  I didn't find anything that asked for reactions to that as a slogan, but there was an interesting pair of questions from September 1946 (a couple of months after Trump was born).  The first was:

"Which of these statements do you think best describes what the men who have been in charge of our relations with foreign countries in the past ten years have been trying to do?...
1. They have nearly always tried to help the rest of the world even if what they did wasn't always the best thing for America.
2. They have tried to help the rest of the world and America at the same time, believing that what was the best thing for the world was the best thing for America.
3. They have looked out for America first but at the same time have tried not to do anything that hurt the rest of the world too much.
4. They have tried to look out for America first, last, and all the time, and have not cared too much what happened to the rest of the world."

The second was:  "Which of these statements best describes what you think we should try to do now and in the future," choosing from the same answers.

                                        Have tried                  Should
Help world                         20%                         4%
Both                                    35%                       33%
America first                       25%                       44%
America always                     4%                         9%
DK                                      15%                        11%

There was a pretty substantial difference between what people thought that leaders had been doing and what they thought they should have done.  Broken down by education, there was not much difference in beliefs about what had been done, but a pretty substantial difference in beliefs about what should be done.
                               
                     World            Both            First         Always          DK
No HS            3%                21%             41%         12%             22%
HS                  4%                35%             48%           7%               6%
College           5%                47%             40%           5%               2%

The two extreme positions were not very popular among any group, and the "America first, but" position was about equally popular among all of them.  Support for "best for the world is best for America" increased substantially with education.

Although the question has never been repeated, I think it has implication for today.  The idea that the government should look after America first has a lot of popular appeal, especially among less educated people.  In 1946, a lot of people would have remembered pre-war isolationism and its "America First" slogan, and the experience of the war might have made them feel positive about international cooperation.  Nevertheless, there was more support for "America first," than "what's best for the world is best for America."

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]