Are Democrats growing more accepting of political violence?

After law enforcement prevented a shooter from entering the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — the third attempt on President Donald Trump’s life in less than two years — commentators sparred over how common political violence has become, and who was more likely to support it.

Conservative broadcaster Ben Ferguson drew criticism from his fellow CNN panelists when he said April 27 that more conservatives will be killed “if the Democratic Party doesn’t wake up and realize that words had meaning and they light the fuse.” 

“Twenty-five percent of the Democratic Party believes that political violence is appropriate,” Ferguson said.

The assassination attempts on Trump, combined with the killings of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, have heightened political violence as a public concern. After the most recent attempt on Trump’s life, the White House blamed rhetoric from Democrats for promoting violence. Democrats countered that this wrongly conflates criticism of the president and his policies with encouraging violence, and said that Trump and his allies have at times encouraged violence. 

We looked through recent polling to get a sense of how broad the support for political violence is among Democrats, and other Americans. We found evidence of an increasing tolerance for violence among Democrats and liberals, reversing some previous data showing conservatives more tolerant of political violence. Still, most people, regardless of political affiliation, reject political violence.

“The No. 1 finding is that tens of millions of Americans support political violence, while between 75% and 80% of Americans abhor political violence,” said Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Here is some of what we found.

1. The vast majority of Americans oppose violence for political ends.

Three polls from late 2025 — by Reuters/Ipsos, Marquette University Law School and the Public Religion Research Institute — found that between 79% and 91% of Americans oppose political violence.