The size of the EDL movement has been difficult to gauge. One British Sociologist noted that within a year and a half of the group's formation it had "grown substantially" but that it is "extremely difficult to know exactly how big or how well supported the EDL is." The organisation has no official system of membership, or formal means of joining, and thus no membership list. In 2011, Bartlett and Littler estimated that between 25,000 and 35,000 people were active members in the EDL movement. They believed about half of these had attended demonstrations and that the highest concentration was in the Greater London area. On the basis of her research with the group, Pilkington suggested that there was a "high turnover in the movement", while Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell observed that members "drift in and out of its activities". The internet hacktivist group Anonymous has published personal details of EDL members as part of a campaign against the group.

Much of its support came from individuals that the group called "armchair warriors", those who may not attend street protests but support the organisation and its aims online and campaigning by email, letter writing, and telephoning. Researchers found many individuals in white working-class areas who supported the EDL's views but did not want to attend its demonstrations, fearing violence, arrest, and the potential loss of their jobs. Many supportive women saw the demonstrations as a "man's thing", while various older men explained their non-attendance by characterising these events as a "young man's thing". Some female members also expressed frustration with the laddish culture that dominated the movement; one female member, whose father and partner were also members, complained that it was mostly "coked up bald headed blokes running round the streets".

In July 2010, the EDL had 22,000 followers on Facebook; following the killing of Lee Rigby in 2013 this had reached 160,000, and as of February 2015, it had risen further to 184,000. As of January 2016, its Angels Division for women had over 17,000 likes, while that of its LGBT Division had 3,500 likes. Its Facebook following was smaller than that of its rival, Britain First; in 2015, when the EDL had 181,000 followers, Britain First had 816,000. Pilkington argued that the EDL's active membership, meaning those who attended its rallies and events, peaked between January and April 2010, when national demonstrations could accrue 2000 people, but by the end of that year this had declined to between 800 and 1000. By 2012, the group's national demonstrations were typically only attracting between 300 and 700 people.

The EDL forged what Busher described as "seemingly unlikely alliances. Long-term football hooligans marched alongside people waving gay pride flags, and people who had until recently been part of the extreme right scene stood next to people holding Israel flags." The EDL brought together three main constituencies; football hooligans, longstanding far-right activists, and a range of socio-economically marginalised people, the majority of whom were young men. Copsey noted that "beyond their antagonism towards Islam, there is no ideology that binds this ragbag coalition together", and that the EDL was therefore always susceptible to fracture. The group initially drew much of its membership from established football violence networks but later gained recruits from established sectors of the far-right and from within the counter-jihad movement. However, when the group was at its peak only a minority of its supporters had established far-right links, and for the majority their membership of the EDL was the first time that they had been actively involved in a political group.

Involvement with the EDL could bring various problems for its members which would dissuade their ongoing involvement; this included financial costs, the loss of friends, potential police scrutiny, and the restrictions it placed on their time. Various members described having friendships and relationships with family members that ended because of their decision to join the EDL, while others concealed their involvement from their employer out of a fear that they would lose their job. Some expressed fears that social services would take their children into foster care if their EDL membership was known, or that they would be the target of violence from anti-fascists and Muslims.

Meadowcroft and Morrow suggested that the EDL overcame the collective action problem by offering its members "access to violent conflict, increased self-worth and group solidarity". They argued that for many working-class young men who have "little meaning or cause for pride" in their lives, membership of the EDL allows them to "reimagine" themselves as "heroic freedom fighters" battling to save their nation from its fundamental enemy, Islam, "thereby bolstering their sense of self-worth." In addition, they argued that EDL membership gave individuals a sense of group identity and community which they might otherwise be lacking, citing various examples of members who described their local division as being like a family. In various cases, EDL members grew closer to one another because they had lost many other groups outside the organisation as a result of their membership. Pilkington similarly observed members describing the EDL as being akin to family, although noted that they often qualified this by describing certain individuals in the movement as "clowns", "nutters", "pricks", "idiots", and "backstabbers", either because they were suspected of being police informants or had defected to other groups. She noted that a key source of tension within the group surrounded issues of romantic relationships, with various individuals accused of "shagging around" in the movement.

Profile of members

The EDL describe their members as "ordinary, non-racist citizens of England... who have had enough of being treated as second class citizens to Jihadis in our own country". Studies found that the majority of EDL members were young, working-class, white men. A recurring joke among the EDL membership was that the group's female supporters were mostly involved so that they could find men to engage in sexual and romantic relationships with; accordingly, one female member was quoted as describing the EDL's female division as the "sticky knicker brigade".

On the basis of her ethnographic research among the EDL, Pilkington found that 74% of her respondents were under 35, in contrast to the older support base of the BNP and UKIP. 77% were male to only 23% female, although women could be found in several senior positions. 51% described themselves as being "White English", and 23% as "White British". Only 6% of those she interviewed had either completed or were studying for a higher education degree; 20% had never completed their secondary school-level education. 49% were unemployed, 20% were in either part-time or irregular employment, and only 11% were in full-time employment. 57% lived in social housing, in contrast to only 17.5% of the general population. She also found that EDL members had rarely been raised in "stable, strong and protective environments", that accounts of sexual abuse and violence in childhood were somewhat common, and that a number had been cared for by grandparents or in foster care because their own parents were unable to do so. She noted that very few regarded themselves as Christian, and most had an ambivalent view of Christianity. Pilkington also found that while all were critical of recent governments, none—barring the few neo-Nazis who attended EDL rallies but did not consider themselves members—desired a more authoritarian government, one-party state, or dictatorship.

In 2011, Bartlett and Littler surveyed 1,295 EDL Facebook supporters. At the time, 81% of the EDL's Facebook supporters were male, to 19% female; among those surveyed by Bartlett and Littler most were young, with only 28% being over the age of thirty, and only 30% had attended either college or university. Bartlett and Littler found that EDL supporters were disproportionately unemployed; among 16 to 24 year old EDL supporters, 28% were unemployed (to a national average of 20%), and among 25 to 64 year olds, 28% were unemployed (to a national average of 6%). The issue that was most important to those surveyed was immigration; 42% considered immigration as one of the two largest issues affecting England, while only 31% cited Islamic extremism. They also found 34% of them voted for the BNP, more than for any other party; 14% said they would vote UKIP and another 14% said they would vote for the Conservative Party. Only 9% said that they would vote Labour, and 3% Liberal Democrat. When asked to rank their three most important personal values, 36% said security, 34% said strong government, 30% said rule of law, and 26% said individual freedom. The surveyed EDL supporters also displayed significantly higher than average levels of distrust in the government, police, and judiciary; conversely, their levels of distrust of other institutions, such as political parties, the mainstream media, the army, trade unions, and the European Union were not significantly higher that those exhibited by the broader population.

Additional research was carried out by Matthew Goodwin, David Cutts, and Laurence Janta-Lupinski, who drew upon the data gathered by YouGov in an October 2012 survey. This included 82 people who described themselves as members or expressed an interest in joining, and 298 who agreed with the EDL's values but did not wish to join; Goodwin et al called the latter "sympathisers". Their research found that those who sympathised with the EDL tended to be "older men, have low education levels, are skilled workers, read right-wing tabloid newspapers and support right-wing parties at elections"; they also noted, however, that "they are not disproportionately more likely to be unemployed or live in social housing" that members of the population more broadly. In contrast, those more committed to the movement, who were either members or wanted to join, displayed "greater financial insecurity", being more likely than average to be unemployed or in part-time employment, and more likely than average to live in social housing, rely on state benefits, and have no educational qualifications. These members were found to be "extremely pessimistic about intergroup relationships, strongly xenophobic and considerably more likely than others to endorse the use of violence when defending their in-group from perceived threats". 8% of sympathisers and 9% of members stated that they voted for either UKIP or the BNP, a figure four times higher than in the broader YouGov sample; supporters of the Conservative Party were also found to be significantly more likely to sympathise with the EDL than non-Conservative voters.

Perceptions of victimhood

The political scientist Alexander Oaten argued that victimhood was "the central formulating point for the EDL's collective identity".