Nearly 12 percent of respondents said they were “sometimes justified” in using violence if it meant returning Donald J. Trump to the presidency.
One in five adults in the United States would be willing to condone acts of political violence, a new national survey commissioned by public health experts found, a revelation they say captures the rise in extremism displayed during an attack. January 6 on the. Capital.
The online survey of more than 8,600 adults in the United States was conducted by research firm Ipsos from mid-May to early June on behalf of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, which released the Tuesday’s results.
The group that said they would be willing to allow such violence was 20.5 percent of those surveyed, with the majority of that group responding that it was “generally” at least “defensive at times” to use force – the remaining 3 percent answered that. such violence was “usually” or “always” justified.
About 12 percent of survey respondents answered that they would be at least “somewhat willing” to resort to violence themselves to threaten or intimidate someone.
And nearly 12 percent of respondents also thought it was “at least sometimes justifiable” to use violence if it meant returning Donald J. Trump to the presidency.
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“This has exceeded my darkest expectation,” said Dr. See the article : Support the team’s mental health after a violent news event. Garen J. Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Program and an emergency room physician, in an interview Wednesday.
But some experts focused on political violence are far more skeptical of reports that it is widespread, saying that estimates tend to overstate the problem given the intense media coverage of the issue.
A study conducted by the Polarization Research Lab and Dartmouth College last December found that political violence was responsible for slightly more than 1 percent of violent hate crimes in the United States. The report found that surveys that allow for self-reported attitudes have multiple interpretations of political violence – using ranges such as “somewhat justified,” “usually justified” and “always justified” – inclined upwards.
However, the prevalence of extremist views about violence reflects an increase in the number of threats to elected officials and headline attacks that have disrupted government business, including confirmation of the results of the 2020 presidential election by Congress.
“These findings suggest a continuing alienation and suspicion of American democratic society and its institutions,” the UC-Davis researchers said in a manuscript. “Substantial minorities of the population support violence, including lethal violence, to achieve political objectives.”
With less than four months until the midterm elections in November, the researchers didn’t want to wait to share their findings and took the unusual step of releasing them in a preprint manuscript, Dr. Wintemute said.
“There’s not much time,” he said.
When asked if “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy,” more than 40 percent of those polled said they agreed in some way, ranging from “somewhat” to “very strongly.” A similar percentage agreed to the point that “in America, immigrants are being replaced by native-born whites,” a racist doctrine known as the replacement theory.
“I remember the feeling of putting those words on paper, thinking what the hell we’re getting here,” Dr. Wintemute said of the survey questions.
Some experts on the study of political violence who were not involved in the research warned Wednesday that extrapolating the data to the entire US population could be misleading. Attitudes towards violence do not always translate into action, they said.
“Even as we study violence, how do we make sure we don’t normalize the belief that violence is acceptable?” said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridge Division Initiative, a nonpartisan research group that tracks political violence and is based at Princeton University.
In 2021, the US Capitol Police investigated 9,625 direct threats against members of Congress and other cases involving statements or actions, an increase of nearly 12 percent from 2020, according to data from the agency. The number of cases has increased steadily over the past five years, more than doubling the total for 2017.
