RUTHFULLY YOURS

Political violence has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history. Today, there’s a very clear upswing. But is it widely accepted? No. In fact, Americans overwhelmingly oppose using violence to achieve political goals, and mostly blame major political parties as equal threats to use violent tactics for the sake of political power, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

A representative sample of Americans were asked: “Do you believe that using violence to achieve political goals is ever justified?”

Respondents made clear they didn’t like violence by either party. Overall, only 9% of those taking the poll said violence for political goals was “always justified,” while sometimes be justified, while 19% said violence was “sometimes justified.” But a significant majority — 62% — said violence was “never justified.” Another 10% weren’t sure.

So overall, 28% believe political violence can be justified, while 62% say never.

This national online I&I/TIPP Poll was conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, with 1.459 adults participating. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.

This is another case where the political affiliations don’t matter as much. Democrats (9% “always justified,” 14% “sometimes justified,” and 68% “never justified”) aren’t too far away from Republicans (13% “always justified,” 22% “sometimes justified,” and 58% “never justified”) and independents (4% “always justified,” 22% “sometimes justified,” and 63% “never justified”).

Age is a different matter. The younger the respondent, the more likely they are to support political violence as justified. For those ages 18 to 24, it’s 37%, while for those 25 to 44 its 45%; that plummets to 21% for those 45 to 64, and just 9% for those 65+.

Clearly, political violence isn’t a selling point for any party’s message to its followers. And violence as a political tactic wanes as U.S. voters age.

A second question asked the following: “Which group do you believe poses the greater threat of political violence in America today: left-wing extremists, right-wing extremists, both equally, or neither?”

Here the answer is more or less equally split.

Overall, 26% responded “left-wing extremists,” while 23% said “right-wing extremists,” and a plurality of 42% gave the answer “both equally.” Only 9% said “neither.”

As might be expected, political affiliation did have an effect on answers. But it wasn’t as large as one might suspect.

Democrats (12% “leftist extremists”) were well below Republicans (45% “leftist extremists”) and independents (20% “leftist extremists) in seeing the left as a threat. But Democrats (37% “right-wing extremists”) were much higher than Republicans (14% “right-wing extremists”) and independents (20% right-wing extremists) in ascribing rightward political leanings for likely political violence.

The “both equally” response got high marks from all three groups, with Dems at 41%. GOP at 34% and indies at 53%. And note that Republicans are the only party of the three for which the “both equally” response (34%) is less than the “leftist extremist” response (45%).

A third question addressed the media’s role in covering political violence: “Do you think the media treats violence from the left and right fairly, or do they focus more on one side?”

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There was a near-even split in the response overall: 27% said the media “treat both fairly,” while 24% believed they “focus more on the right,” 21% felt they “focus more on the left,” and 28% said they were not sure.

But things change when one looks at the individual party responses. Among Democrats, 33% say the media treat both fairly, while 14% say they focus more on the right and 24% say they focus more on the left.

Republicans see things a bit differently, not surprisingly, with 26% saying the media treat both major parties fairly, 37% maintaining the media focuses more on the right, and 19% saying they focus more on the left. Independents once again straddle the two parties, with 23% answering “treat both fairly,” 21% backing “focus more on the right” and another 21% “focus more on the left.”

Political violence has been on the rise over the past decade, perhaps due to the widening ideological gap between the left and the right. A kind of cultural centrifugal force has worked to create large groups of angry partisans, a result of pervasive and clearly demonstrable left-wing media bias, which often seems intended to inflame rather than to inform.

In recent years, political violence has risen another notch following Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the White House. Violent demonstrations took place repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office, and have continued in his second term.

That violence, of course, includes two assassination attempts on Trump’s life, and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, campus harassment of Jewish students following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and continuing violent demonstrations in major blue cities against ICE that are meant to intimidate anyone who doesn’t agree with protestors’ views and interfere with enforcement of immigration laws.

How does this happen? As the City Journal recently explained:

For the past decade, the Left’s elite media and political figures have entrenched a series of hyperbolic and highly polemical narratives: that Donald Trump is analogous to Adolf Hitler; that America is about to fall to fascism; that conservatives are organizing a genocide of transgender people; that deportations are laying the groundwork for martial law. These narratives have taken root not only on the fringes of activism and academia, but are reflected in the headlines of the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, MSNBC, and other mainstream outlets.”

Encouraging violence has become common online, in blogs, and on podcasts. Even politicians either excuse or actually encourage violence against their political foes.

Most recently, Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones texted about former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert: “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”

The growing culture of violence includes diffusely-organized groups such as Antifa, which is accused of providing violent “soldiers” for left-wing demonstrations to help create chaos, damage businesses and homes, and intimidate and even assault citizens who dare to defy them.

Just this month, a federal grand jury charged two men with terrorism-related offenses over an alleged Antifa attack on an immigration detention center in Texas last summer. That was preceded by an executive order from Trump declaring Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.

This has been building for some time. As a study released in September by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found:

More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists. The left-wing movement as a whole has not returned to its violent heights of the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of terrorist incidents involving left-wing extremists so far this year puts 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades.

As the I&I/TIPP Poll suggests, this resurgence in political violence is unwelcome by average voters of all political stripes. While both sides of the debate see the other as more to blame, all know that it is a problem that won’t go away

I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past six presidential elections.

Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.