Research Survey shows little shift in Americans’ views on political violence

[C C]

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1130413

EXCERPTS: A large, nationally representative survey of U.S. adults finds that support for, and willingness to engage in, political violence remained largely stable from mid-2024 to mid-2025, despite a highly contentious national election and ongoing political polarization, according to a new study published in Injury Epidemiology.

The research, led by the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention (CVP), polled more than 8,000 adults nationwide. The survey measured beliefs about democracy, civil conflict and the use of force to advance political objectives.

While the researchers identified small increases in the proportion of respondents who view political violence as justified under at least some circumstances, they found no increase overall in personal willingness to commit political violence or to use firearms in such situations.

“What stands out is not a dramatic escalation, but a pattern of relative stability,” said Garen Wintemute, first author of the study. Wintemute is an attending physician in the UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine and director of CVP. “Across the political spectrum, the large majority of Americans continue to reject political violence, even during a period of intense political strain.”

Wintemute’s distinguished research has shown violence is not only a public safety issue - it’s also a health problem. He launched the annual, nationally representative survey of adults in the United States in 2022 to track year-over-year changes in attitudes toward political violence.

[...] Findings across political groups. The researchers examined responses by political party and by affiliation with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Some of the key results from 2024 that persisted in 2025:

• A higher percentage of MAGA Republicans (52.2%) than of strong Democrats (32.1%) believed political violence is usually or always justified to achieve at least one political objective.
  
• The two groups did not differ significantly regarding their stated willingness to personally injure or kill someone, and such willingness remained uncommon across all groups.

From 2024 to 2025, some attitudes moved in opposite directions:

• Strong Democrats showed small increases in some measures of perceived justification for violence.
  
• MAGA Republicans, on average, showed small decreases on several of those same measures.

“Looking at only one group can be misleading,” Wintemute said. “The data show modest movement in multiple directions. What’s consistent is that extreme positions and personal readiness to commit violence remain limited to a small minority across all political affiliations. Entrapment in a spiral of escalating political violence is not inevitable in the United States.” (MORE - missing details, no ads)

[Syne]

In the 2025 longitudinal survey by the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, "strong Democrats" were defined as respondents who identified their political party affiliation as Democrat on a standard 7-point scale ranging from strong Democrat to strong Republican.

In the UC Davis longitudinal survey series, "MAGA Republicans" were defined using a specific two-part combination of political behavior and belief:

2020 Voting Record: Respondents who self-identified as Republicans and voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Election Result Denial: Respondents who also agreed "strongly" or "very strongly" with the statement that "the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president."

The UC Davis study specifically excluded Trump voters who trusted the 2020 election results to isolate the "stolen election" narrative as a primary driver of support for political violence.

The UC Davis study did not establish a distinct "driver relationship" for Democrats because the primary, systemic conspiracy narrative driving political violence at the time was asymmetric, heavily centering around the 2020 election denial.

The UC Davis study did not create a custom "Anti-Fascist" or "Democracy-Defending" subcategory for Democrats because the researchers evaluated those specific motivations symmetrically across the entire population, rather than using them to define a partisan subgroup.
- gemini

So, biased methodology. "Anti-fascist" and "defending our democracy" are very much drivers of political violence among Democrats.