87% of Working Nurses Feel They Must Keep Politics Quiet at Work

Part of Nurse.org’s Nurse Voter Survey 2026, based on responses from 830 licensed nurses before the November midterms.

Keeping politics out of the workplace is standard professional advice. The Nurse Voter Survey didn’t ask nurses who they planned to vote for; it asked how that pressure plays out in their work: whether they feel they can speak freely, how it shapes their interactions with patients, and whether it figures into decisions about staying in or leaving the job.

These findings reflect 830 licensed nurses who chose to take the Nurse.org survey, not a representative sample of all US nurses.

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We asked: do you ever feel like you need to keep your political views quiet at work? Among the 631 nurses currently working in nursing (patient care or non-patient care), 87.0% said often or sometimes. The breakdown:

Source: Nurse.org, Nurse Voter Survey 2026.

“Often” is the dominant answer, picked by more than half of currently working nurses. It outweighs “sometimes,” “rarely,” and “never” combined.

Across Republicans, Democrats, and independents, a strong majority of nurses said they feel they need to keep their politics quiet at work.

Base: 785 nurses who gave a substantive answer, excluding those who selected “not currently working.” This base includes some nurses who are retired or not currently in nursing but who answered this question; the headline figures use the narrower 631 currently-working base. The share is also similar across work settings: 87.3% in patient care (421/482) and 85.9% in non-patient-care nursing (128/149). Source: Nurse.org, Nurse Voter Survey 2026.

The gap of several points between the two major parties and independents is real, but the share is high across all three. In their written answers, nurses on both sides describe the same thing. “I am very much in the minority as a conservative and I do not ever express my opinions at work,” one nurse wrote. Another wrote, “I live in a red state and I am a progressive liberal person.”

One nurse leader described feeling constrained. “As a leader, when nurses express political views, I can’t respond. It’s that simple. There’s no safe way to respond. The only safe space for me is silence when in the workspace,” the nurse wrote.

Some nurses described fear of consequences. “I am conservative and pro life and I feel I often have to keep my political and ethical views quiet to avoid discrimination in promotions or educational opportunities,” one Republican nurse wrote. A Democratic nurse working in public education wrote, “I work in public education, we can not discuss it for fear of retaliation/consequences.”

Another described the social cost of speaking at all. “At this point, I feel if someone brings up their political preference, no matter which side of the aisle, that person becomes a social pariah and other team members treat them with disdain and disrespect,” one nurse wrote.

Sometimes one comment is enough: “A coworker got upset because I told her I didn’t want to hear anything about the president. She hated my guts after that comment.”

We also asked whether the political environment has affected any of several specific parts of nurses’ work in the past two years. 81.4% of the nurses in our survey selected at least one effect. Among currently working nurses, the most common effects were on stress at work, how they feel about nursing overall, and interactions with patients. Four of the six effects were picked by at least 4 in 10 working nurses.

Multiple responses allowed; percentages do not sum to 100. Base: 631 currently working nurses. Source: Nurse.org, Nurse Voter Survey 2026.

The answers are self-reported. A nurse who selected “my decision to stay in or leave a job” is reporting that politics has entered that thinking, not that they have resigned. The other items work the same way.

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41% of currently working nurses in our survey said the political environment has affected their interactions with patients or their families in the past two years. Some nurses who wrote about their experiences described patients or family members bringing political conversations into clinical settings.

One nurse wrote about being asked questions they didn’t want to answer: “personal questions have popped up more and more like what is your political view? How old are you? Did you get vaccinated? These are questions I don’t answer because it’s none of your business and doesn’t affect the care you get from me as a nurse.”

Others described patients bringing political views directly into the room. One nurse wrote about a patient who wrongly assumed the nurse voted for Trump: “A patient asked me if Trump was ‘my president’ because they were black and did not want a nurse who voted for him. … But it is very uncomfortable.” Another: “I’ve also had many patients ‘go off on me’ verbally spewing hatred for President Trump and I have to repeatedly tell them I don’t discuss politics even though I have to listen to their rants.”

The experiences were not all the same. Another nurse wrote that “more patients and families have been making racist comments towards me.”

A psychiatric NP pointed to what politics does to patients themselves: “As a psychiatric NP, every new election brings up fears and concerns for patients,” the nurse wrote.

We also asked everyone a follow-up: overall, has the effect been mostly negative, mostly positive, a mix, or basically unaffected? For the nurses who reported at least one effect on the previous question, the direction leaned strongly negative.

Base: 676 nurses who selected at least one effect of the political environment. Source: Nurse.org, Nurse Voter Survey 2026.

Nurses who reported any effect were more than twice as likely to call it mostly negative as to call it a mix of both. “Mostly positive” was the choice of just 3.0%. One nurse put it plainly: “Work is hard enough … don’t want to risk political drama at work.”

87% of working nurses in our survey said they feel they need to keep their political views quiet at work. More than half said they feel that need often. The share is high whether a nurse is Republican, Democrat, or independent; in patient care or outside of it; under 50 or 50 and older. When the political environment registers an effect on nurses, this survey says that effect is more often negative than positive.

That is a workplace signal, not a prediction about how nurses will vote. We didn’t survey other professions, so we can’t say whether nurses differ from other workers on this. Within this survey, the pressure to stay quiet is one more thing nurses are managing at work. It is widespread, felt often, and shared across parties.

More from the 2026 Nurse Voter Survey

🤔 Have you ever felt you needed to keep your political views quiet at work? Tell us in the comments below.

The figures in this piece are from the Nurse Voter Survey 2026, Nurse.org’s survey of 830 licensed nurses conducted September 1 through October 25, 2026. For the full methodology, sample characteristics, data cleaning, and the full survey results in question order, see our main results article.

Three bases are specific to this piece. The headline figure uses the 631 nurses currently working in nursing, because the question is specifically about work. The party breakdown uses the 785 nurses who gave a substantive answer, which includes some retired and not-currently-working nurses who answered this question. The direction-of-effect figures use the 676 nurses who selected at least one effect; no party breakdown of direction publishes because the Republican cell on that base is below our minimum threshold.

The share of nurses who feel they need to keep political views quiet at work was similar across age groups: 85.4% among those under 50 and 88.2% among those 50 and older, on the 631 currently-working base. Age was an optional demographic question.

The survey asked an optional question for respondents to identify as Republican, Democrat, independent, or another category. The optional written-answer questions did not ask about candidates, parties, or political labels. About one in seven nurses who wrote in their own words brought up a politician, a party, or a political label on their own. Democrats, Republicans, and independents all did. We quote nurses here on the workplace experience itself, not on candidates.

Nurse.org Original Research