Some 85% of Americans believe that politically motivated violence is rising in the United States, but they are divided, along partisan lines, about who is responsible, per a new Pew Research Center analysis.
Most Americans see extremism from the political left (53%) and right (52%) as problems, and 47% worried about extremism from those “without clear political views,” the Pew analysis suggests.
Americans are sharply split on the nature of the threat, with 77% of those who at least lean Republican saying left-wing extremism is a “major problem” and 76% of those who at least lean Democrat saying that right-wing extremism is a “major problem.” Just 27% of Republicans and those who lean Republican, and 32% of those who are Democrats or lean Democrat, said extremism on their side of the aisle is a “major” concern.
On the right, only 2% said left-wing extremism was not a problem, and 4% of those on the left said that right-wing extremism was not a problem. Both figures essentially fell within the margin for error, of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
The analysis draws on a poll conducted between Sept. 22 and 28 of 3,445 adults. Pew said that the survey oversampled Hispanic people who voted for U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2024 election and non-Hispanic Asian people to “provide more precise estimates of the opinions and experiences of these smaller demographic subgroups.”
About the same number of those on the left (47%) and on the right (49%) worried about extremism from those who lack “clear political views.”
The analysis comes a month and a half after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a campus event in Utah.
