These numbers are even higher among the most ideological partisans.The share of Republicans seeing substantial justification for violence if their side loses jumped from 15 percent in June to 20 percent in September, while the share of Democrats jumped from 16 percent to 19 percent. There has been an even larger increase in the share of both Democrats and Republicans who believe there would be either “a lot” or “a great deal” of justification for violence if their party were to lose in November.Similarly, 36 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said it is at least “a little” justified for their side “to use violence in advancing political goals”-up from 30 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in June.Those figures are both up from June, when 35 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment. In September, 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats said there would be at least “a little” justification for violence if the other party’s nominee wins the election.Among Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican, 1 in 3 now believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ political goals-a substantial increase over the last three years.While the pool of respondents between our datasets is slightly different, our questions have had the same wording. We were also monitoring another question: Would you condone violence if the other party’s candidate wins the presidential election? Late last year, we noticed an uptick in the number of respondents saying they would condone violence by their own political party, and we decided to combine our data sets to get as much information as possible on this worrisome trend. Our data shows that the willingness of Democrats and Republicans alike to justify violence as a way to achieve political goals has essentially been rising in lockstep.Īll of us have been involved, separately and eventually together, in surveying and researching Americans’ political attitudes and engagement. This growing acceptance of the possibility of violence is a bipartisan movement. Our research, which we’re reporting here for the first time, shows an upswing in the past few months in the number of Americans-both Democrats and Republicans-who said they think violence would be justified if their side loses the upcoming presidential election. Unfortunately, we’re not being alarmist about the potential for violence trends in public opinion that we’ve been tracking provide strong grounds for concern. Our biggest concern is that a disputed presidential election-especially if there are close contests in a few swing states, or if one candidate denounces the legitimacy of the process-could generate violence and bloodshed. Like a growing number of prominent American leaders and scholars, we are increasingly anxious that this country is headed toward the worst post-election crisis in a century and a half.
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