Is the American left really more supportive of political violence?

“THE DATA is clear,” said J.D. Vance. “People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.” The vice-president made the claim while hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show”, five days after the murder of the show’s presenter. Mr Vance cited evidence from YouGov, a pollster. It shows that Americans who identify as liberal (ie, politically left of centre) are substantially more likely than conservatives or moderates to think that political violence could sometimes be justified and that it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure. Mr Vance is correct about the data, but, as our charts show, the reality the polls reflect is complex.

Other surveys back up the findings cited by Mr Vance. Polling commissioned by The Economist (also conducted by YouGov) shows that 20% of liberals think political violence can be justified, compared with 7% of conservatives and moderates. Our polling shows that liberals of all ages are more likely to condone political violence than conservatives but those under 40 are especially likely to do so. Almost one in three young American liberals thinks that violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals (see chart 1). The results agree with polling which suggests that a substantial minority of young liberals were sympathetic to Luigi Mangione, a 27-year-old who is charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, a health-care executive.

However, such findings are likely to be affected both by how pollsters ask questions and when they do. As an extreme example, the American Values Study, a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a non-partisan outfit, asked whether “true American patriots” should resort to violence to “save our country”. When the pollsters put the question this way they found that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to endorse violence (see chart 2). Indeed, the biggest single act of political violence in recent years was the storming of the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6th 2021.

Events also influence how people respond to such questions. PRRI found a dramatic drop in Republican support for political violence after Mr Trump became president for the second time. Polls by YouGov conducted before Kirk’s murder as well as after it also reveal that partisans are far more likely to describe political violence as a “very big problem” in the aftermath of an attack on someone they agree with (see chart 3). The survey cited by Mr Vance was conducted immediately after the murder of Kirk, a leader of the right. That’s probably one reason why Republicans’ condemnation of political violence was stronger than Democrats’.

In 2022 a team of political scientists tried to control for the influence of recent events and for the possibility that vague questions lead respondents to overstate their sympathy for political violence. They did so by asking people about their support for fictional acts of violence. They found when respondents were presented with examples of specific violent acts their support for violence was as much as 13 times lower than when they were asked about violence more abstract terms.

The risk in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder is that a cycle of political violence will become self-reinforcing. Research suggests that partisans overestimate their ideological foes’ support for violence by as much as a factor of four (see chart 4). Fearing their opponents, they become more supportive of violence themselves. When they learn the truth their support for violence falls by a third. By giving the impression that liberals are violence-prone, without mitigating nuance or context, Mr Vance did nothing to allay fears among conservatives.

Other research suggests that high-profile acts of political violence can increase support for violence among those who dislike the victim. That adds to the many reasons that Democratic politicians and other liberal public figures, whatever their views of Kirk, must robustly condemn his murder, and all forms of political violence. ■