Support for Political Violence Adds to Growing U.S. Tension: Survey

Scene from Jan 6. capital riot. by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

More Republicans than Democrats believe violence can be justified to achieve political ends, with support highest among with those who believe former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy,” according to two University of California-Davis surveys.

The companion surveys by researchers for the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program were conducted between May 13 and June 2 among a weighted sample of 8,620 respondents.

Respondents were given 17 political objectives and asked whether they supported violence to achieve them.

The range of support was higher among those self-identifying as Republicans—from approximately 35 percent to nearly 50 percent—than among Democrats (24.7 percent to 27.1 percent).

At the same time, the findings made clear that a majority of the respondents to the survey “rejected political violence altogether and [that] only comparatively small minorities were more than somewhat willing to commit such violence themselves,” wrote the authors.

They added, cautiously, however, that even a small percentage reflected a significant number of Americans whose support “may help create a climate of acceptance, and promote violence by others.”

With a U.S. population estimated at 258 million, “small percentages of respondents in this sample represent larger numbers of persons,” the study said.

The survey found what it said was a “concerning” level of support for violence among selected groups of supporters from both parties.

“It is concerning that support for general statements about the need for violence under current or plausible future conditions and endorsement of violence are common, [though] more so among Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and liberals,” the researchers wrote.

The survey found that “strong Republicans were more likely than strong Democrats” to see violence as usually or always justified to, for example, “return Donald Trump to the presidency this year”; to “stop an election from being stolen”; or to preserve “an American way of life based on Western European traditions.”

“Overall nearly a third of respondents considered violence usually or always justified to achieve at least one specific political objective,” the study found.

The study noted that “strong Democrats were in several cases more willing than strong Republicans to engage in violence [to achieve a political objective] against another person because of that person’s occupation or another social characteristic.”

A companion survey found even stronger support for violence among a segment of respondents it defined as “MAGA Republicans”—people who voted for Trump in 2020 and believe that the election was stolen from him.

“‘MAGA Republicans were substantially more likely than others to consider violence usually or always justified to advance one or more of 17 specific political objectives,” the survey found.

“They were more likely to report that in a future situation where they considered political violence to be justified, they would be armed.”

The researchers added that while MAGA Republicans were a minority and more likely to hold “extreme and racist beliefs,”  they were “not more willing to engage personally in political violence.”

Nevertheless, this group also strongly supported the statement that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy,” the researchers found.

The surveys were conducted as part of the “Life in America” series of questionnaires designed by UC Davis to assess the level of support for violence in America, which it called one of the country’s major “public health” challenges.

“This study proceeded from the position that political violence and its potential antecedents can usefully be examined from a public health perspective, as is true of other forms of violence,” the authors wrote.

“With concern for the stability of democracy and for outbreaks of political violence rising rapidly in the US, and with federal midterm and presidential elections not far off, we sought to learn whether beliefs about democracy and social issues, support for political violence, and personal willingness to engage in political violence varied across the spectrum of party affiliation and political ideology.”

Noting that the support for violence was most prevalent at the “political and ideological extremes” of American life, the researchers suggested that it could be addressed by “risk-based interventions,” but it provided no details.

The survey also looked at general attitudes towards violence.

Among the other findings, the researchers reported that more than 90 percent of all respondents considered violence to be somewhat justified “at least sometimes” in self-defense or to prevent injury or assault to others.

Lead author of the study was Dr. Garen J. Wintermute, chair in violence prevention and distinguished professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis.

Other authors were: Andrew Crawford, PhD; Sonia Robinson, PhD, MPH; Julia P. Schleimer, MPH; Elizabeth A. Tomsich, PhD; and Veronica A. Pear, PhD, MPH, MA—all researchers at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Program.

Download the survey results on political violence here.  Survey findings on MAGA Republican support for violence can be downloaded here.

This summary was prepared by TCR Editor Stephen Handelman