How Do Americans Really Feel About Political Violence?

In the days following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, researchers at the organization More in Common pulled their sleeves up and asked, “Is there something we can study here? Is there an angle that can help Americans make sense of this scary event?”

Americans have been feeling the impact of political division for some time. Research consistently finds a strong majority of Americans feel exhausted by political divisions. Past studies show 65% of Americans are concerned about extremists in both parties; and 86% of Americans think the greatest threat to the U.S. is coming from within.

That’s worrying, because individual acts of violence have the potential to cascade into something far worse in deeply polarized societies, as journalist Barbara Walter explores in her 2022 book, How Civil Wars Start. According to her, many of the signs for outbreaks of civil violence in the U.S. are already in place.

That’s why many researchers believe it is crucial to prevent violence from becoming normalized, and to take action to reduce misperceptions and the worst caricatures of each other. When one side thinks the other is willing to engage in political violence, it becomes more tolerant of violence.

Another study published in 2022 found, “Attitudes of political violence are caused in part by judgments of how much others support and are willing to engage in political violence.” Even when the overwhelming majority of Americans of both parties disagree with political violence, they overestimate the other side’s willingness to commit violent acts—but many do respond and course-correct when their perception gaps are challenged with statistics.

More in Common was born in 2016 in response to these dangers. They started by trying to understand why so many societies were dividing around debates about identity and belonging, and why so many were being increasingly persuaded to see immigration, refugees, and diversity through the lens of “us versus them.”

Since then, More in Common has broadened their research to incorporate social psychology, providing a deeper analysis of the factors contributing to polarization and social fracturing. After the assassination attempt, they turned to over 200 Americans, who broadly represent the country on age, gender, race, and partisanship, to explore whether Republicans felt justified using violence against Democrats. And then they expanded that research to 2,000 Americans by teaming up with the international polling company YouGov to conduct online survey interviews from July 19 to 23.

“We feel like we got a pretty solid slice of Americans,” said Ashley Fabrizio*, a political scientist and quantitative researcher with More in Common. In addition to demographic information, they included their “Hidden Tribes” classifications, which identifies seven distinct “belief” groups of Americans: progressive activist, traditional liberal, passive liberal, politically disengaged, moderate, traditional conservative, and devoted conservative. More in Common researchers believe this breakdown of Americans is more actionable and reveals a very different story than “the tale of a deeply polarized America, split into two camps locked in a fight, determined to crush the other.”

The researchers asked these groups open-ended questions; sometimes they got five-word answers, sometimes paragraphs. Here’s what they found.

We overestimate support for political violence

Fabrizio and her team found that after seeing the image of a bloodied presidential candidate, Americans are concerned about future violence—and 71% expect more civil violence. (The margin of error for this survey is +/- 2.37.)

Lacy, a 24-year-old white Democrat, a “traditional liberal” from Lancaster, New York, wrote: “I just think that this is going to be the start of a lot of big violent cases and I am very scared to be in this country. We already have a gun issue. We already have multiple mass shootings per day on average and now with this is going to make a lot of people upset.”

Peter, a 45-year-old white Independent, devoted conservative from Saint Louis, Missouri, had this to say: “Civil war felt inevitable a couple years ago but cooled off. Recent events may have stoked that fire again.” In this study, Democrats believed 47% of Republicans would agree with the statement, “Violence against Democrats is now justified.”

In fact, that number was 13%, agreeing with that statement strongly or somewhat. When they asked their online panel of Americans about their reactions to the assassination attempt, many Republicans actually condemned any political violence. (Given the assassination attempt was on the Republican presidential nominee, the researchers did not explore in this survey if Democrats felt justified to use violence against Republicans—and what Republicans’ estimation was of Democrats’ support for violence.)

As Sheila, a 24-year-old white woman Republican moderate from Ocala, Florida, said, “It is not justified for Democrats to be attacked now. We should turn the other cheek.” Jaria, a 35-year-old Black man and Republican, from Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, said, “Responding to this violent act with widespread violence is a stupid concept and one that has no place in this country.”

Uniting against violence

More in Common researchers asked their panel who they think was responsible for the attempted assassination, and overwhelmingly people thought it was an act of a lone shooter. A majority 56% said the shooter was responsible; 19% said security issues.

Many in More in Common’s representative panel of Americans saw the assassination attempt not as a moment for retaliation but an opportunity to unite with one voice against political violence. Another, lightning-fast study undertaken by researchers with the Polarization Research Lab also found support for partisan violence (and murder) actually decreased—among both Democrats and Republicans—after the assassination attempt.

“I think what happened is very unfortunate but also hopefully serves as a good wake-up call,” said Brie, a 41-year-old white woman, Democrat, from Sterling, Virginia. “I feel bad for the family that was impacted and as much as I am not a Trump supporter, I do feel grateful that he was not seriously injured.”

“We should not allow violence to be our answer, and it is best not to make hasty decisions about conspiracy theories,” wrote Chloe, a 67-year-old Asian American woman and “traditional conservative Republican” from Watsonville, California. “We all need to be level-headed.”

While Americans may feel intensely divided, More in Common has consistently found at least two-thirds of Americans believe they have more in common than what divides them, and a majority are interested in connecting across difference.

Fabrizio argues that to reduce the risk of political violence, we must strengthen our common values and reinvigorate connections across divisions. Fabrizio said voices that elevate “us versus them” stories that deepen misperceptions need to be challenged and exposed to close perception gaps so we can peacefully and meaningfully navigate our way through difficult and divided times.

“We believe that a unifying story of ‘us’ is more powerful than ‘us versus them’ narratives that divide us as Americans from each other.”

*Names from the More in Common report are pseudonyms