In the weeks after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated in Pennsylvania in July , Americans’ support for partisan violence, and murder specifically, diminished — and fell most sharply among Republicans who identify with Trump. Americans are still exceptionally hostile about people who disagree with them on politics, but “an assassination attempt did not inflame the tensions,” researchers write in a forthcoming paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times reports. Two unsuccessful attempts on Trump’s life, a daily barrage of violent threats against public officials of all stripes and finger-pointing from both parties have fueled the impression that politics are spinning out of control. Some common assumptions about U.S. political violence are not reinforced by recent data, according to several new studies.
Instances of extremist violence have actually declined in recent years by some key measures. Although some Americans continue to say they approve of political violence, support for the most serious types of violence has not increased amid election-related tensions this year. Even amid an explosive political climate and some high-profile incidents, politics may not be becoming broadly more violent. Political violence in the U.S. remains rare, leaving relatively few data points to study. Trend lines can vary widely depending on the how you define violence and what questions you try to answer. Often, the most high-profile incidents don’t match the broad trends. A Reuters investigation this year found that a substantial increase in threats against federal judges has followed Trump’s public criticism of the judiciary since 2020. Some of the most serious known threats against Supreme Court justices in recent years have targeted members of the court’s conservative majority.
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