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Trends in views of democracy and society and support for political violence in the USA, 2022–2024: findings from a nationally representative survey

Abstract

Background

In 2022, a nationally representative longitudinal survey in the USA found concerningly high prevalences of support for and personal willingness to engage in political violence, but those prevalences decreased in 2023. This study examines changes in those prevalences from 2023 to 2024, an election year in the USA.

Methods

Participants were members of Ipsos KnowledgePanel. Wave 3 of the survey was conducted May 23-June 14, 2024; invitations to participate were sent to all respondents to prior waves who remained in KnowledgePanel. Outcome measures concern justification for the use of violence to advance any of 17 specified political objectives, personal willingness to engage in political violence at 4 levels of severity and against 9 target populations, and expectation of firearm use in political violence. Outcomes are expressed as weighted proportions. Year-to-year change is based on the means of aggregated individual change scores, which have a potential range from 0 (no change) to ± 2.

Results

The 2024 completion rates were 88.4% (8896 respondents/10,064 invitees) overall, 91.6% (8185 respondents/8932 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2023, and 62.8% (711 respondents/1132 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2022 but not in 2023. After weighting, 50.9% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.5%, 52.3%) were female; weighted mean (SD) age was 48.5 (24.9) years. From 2023 to 2024, the prevalence of the view that violence was usually or always justified to advance at least 1 political objective did not change (2024: 26.2%, 95% CI 25.0%, 27.5%; 2023: 25.3%, 95% CI 24.1%, 26.5%). There were no changes from 2023 to 2024 in willingness to damage property, threaten a person, injure a person, or kill a person in an act of political violence, and no changes in expectations of firearm use in situations where respondents considered political violence justifiable. Changes on other measures were infrequent (17 of 58 comparisons in the main analysis) and small where they occurred (with 2 exceptions, change < 0.05).

Conclusions

Contrary to expectation, support for and willingness to participate in political violence in this cohort showed little to no change from 2023 to 2024, an election year in the USA. These findings can help guide prevention efforts.

Background

Concern for the possibility of political violence in the USA has risen recently [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Experts have repeatedly stressed that such violence could threaten the health and safety of the population and the country’s viability as a functioning democracy.

In 2022, we conducted Wave 1 of a nationally representative longitudinal survey of support for and willingness to engage in political violence [9]. Nearly one-third of respondents (32.8%) considered violence usually or always justified to advance at least 1 of 17 specified political objectives; 13.7% strongly or very strongly agreed with a prediction of civil war in the next few years. These prevalences fell in 2023’s Wave 2, to 25.3% for justification of violence to advance specific political objectives and to 5.7% for an expectation of civil war [10]. While 2022 was an election year, 2023 was not; the declines were not surprising. Other findings from Waves 1 and 2 identified a broad array of respondent characteristics that were associated with support for and willingness to engage in political violence [11,12,13,14,15].

This study presents findings on support for political violence and many of those associated characteristics for 2024. It is motivated by our continued belief that understanding trends in support for and willingness to participate in political violence can strengthen efforts to prevent and prepare for that violence.

The value of trend data is in part a function of their recency. Wave 3 was in the field in May and June, less than 5 months before a strongly contested presidential election. A serial cross-sectional analysis of the Wave 3 data did not find an increase from 2023 to 2024 in a perceived need for civil war in the USA [16]. Nonetheless, our expectation for this analysis was that support for and willingness to engage in political violence would be higher in 2024 than in 2023.

The main analysis presents 2024 prevalences for all 8896 respondents and single-year changes from 2023 to 2024 based on linked observations for 8185 individuals who participated in both Wave 2 and Wave 3. Supplementary analyses address items that were presented only in 2023 and 2024, or only in 2022 and 2024. The survey was in the field at the time of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions in New York [17]; a sensitivity analysis compares responses received before and after that event.

Methods

Methods for Wave 3 of the survey closely followed those for Waves 1 and 2 [9, 10]. Wave 3 was designed by the authors and administered online in English and Spanish from May 23 to June 14, 2024, by the survey research firm Ipsos [18]. The study was reviewed by the University of California Davis Institutional Review Board (protocol 187125: exempt from full review, category 2, survey research). The IRB waived a requirement for written or verbal consent. Before participants accessed the questionnaire, they were provided informed consent language that concluded, “[by] continuing, you are agreeing to participate in this study.” The study is reported following American Association for Public Opinion Research guidelines [19].

Participants

Participants for Wave 1 were drawn from Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an online research panel that has been widely used in population-based research on violence and firearm ownership [20,21,22,23,24,25]. To establish a nationally representative panel, KnowledgePanel members are recruited on an ongoing basis through address-based probability sampling using data from the US Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File [26, 27]. Recruitment into KnowledgePanel involves repeated contact attempts, if necessary, by mail and telephone. Recruited adults in households without internet access are provided a web-enabled device and free internet service, and a modest, primarily points-based incentive program seeks to encourage participation and promote participants’ retention in KnowledgePanel over time [26, 27].

A probability-proportional-to-size procedure was used to select a study-specific sample for Wave 1. All panel members who were aged 18 years and older were eligible for selection. Invitations were sent by e-mail; automatic reminders were delivered to non-respondents by e-mail and telephone beginning 3 days later [26, 27].

The Wave 1 survey was conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022. It included a main sample, which provided the study population for our initial report [9], and oversamples of firearm owners, transgender people, combat veterans, and California residents that were recruited to ensure adequate power for planned subset analyses. Compared with main sample nonrespondents, main sample respondents were older and more frequently white, non-Hispanic; were more often married; had higher education and income; and were less likely to be working [9].

The survey cohort’s participation history is presented in Figure S1 (Supplement, Additional file 1, Figure S1). Including the main sample and oversamples, Wave 1 comprised 12,947 respondents (completion rate of 56.7%). Of those respondents, 11,140 (86.0%) remained active members of KnowledgePanel on Wave 2’s launch date and were invited to participate in Wave 2. (The remaining 1807 Wave 1 respondents had left the cohort through normal attrition.)

Wave 2 had 9385 respondents (completion rate of 84.2%), of whom 8932 (95.2%) remained active members of KnowledgePanel on Wave 3’s launch date and were invited to participate in Wave 3. (Another 453 Wave 2 respondents had left the cohort through normal attrition.)

Invitations to participate in Wave 3 were also sent to 1132 Wave 1 respondents who had not participated in Wave 2 and remained active members of KnowledgePanel on Wave 3’s launch date. (Another 716 Wave 1 respondents who did not respond to Wave 2 had left the cohort through normal attrition.)

A final Wave 3 survey weight variable for longitudinal analyses was provided by Ipsos. It adjusted for the initial probability of selection into KnowledgePanel and for survey-specific nonresponse and over- or under-coverage using design weights with post-stratification raking ratio adjustments. As with prior samples, the weighted 2024 sample is designed to be statistically representative of the noninstitutionalized adult population of the USA as reflected in the 2021 March supplement of the Current Population Survey [26, 27].

Measures

Sociodemographic data were collected by Ipsos from profiles created and maintained by KnowledgePanel members. Survey questions that supplied data for this analysis covered 3 broad domains: beliefs regarding democracy and the potential for violence and civil war in the USA, beliefs regarding American society and institutions, and support for and willingness to engage in political violence.

Our primary outcome measures again concerned political violence. Violence was represented by the phrase “force or violence,” defined in the questionnaire as “physical force strong enough that it could cause pain or injury to a person.” “Force or violence to advance an important political objective that you support” was used in questions about respondents’ support for and willingness to engage in political violence.

As in 2022 and 2023, respondents were asked about the extent to which they considered political violence to be justified “in general” and then about justification for its use to advance specified political objectives. Example objectives include “to return Donald Trump to the presidency this year,” “to preserve an American way of life based on Western European traditions,” and “to stop police violence.” Responses for 17 objectives were collected in all 3 years. In 2022, 9 of 17 objectives were presented to all respondents and 8 were paired, with respondents randomized for each pair to see 1 item; each respondent was presented with 13 of 17 objectives. In 2023 and 2024 all objectives were presented to all respondents; 2 additional objectives were included in 2023 and retained in 2024.

Respondents in 2024 who considered political violence to be at least sometimes justified to advance at least 1 objective were asked about their personal willingness to engage in political violence: by type of violence (to “damage property,” “threaten or intimidate a person,” “injure a person,” “kill a person”), by target population (examples: “an elected federal or state government official,” “a police officer,” “a person who does not share your religion”), and by social context (examples: “on your own,” “as part of a group”).

All respondents were asked about the likelihood of their future use of firearms in a situation where they consider political violence to be justified (examples: “I will be armed with a gun,” “I will shoot someone with a gun”).

The full text of all questions reported on here, including sources for questions from prior surveys by other investigators, is in the Supplement (Supplement, Additional File 1).

Implementation

Ipsos translated the questionnaire into Spanish, and interpreting services staff at UC Davis Medical Center reviewed the translation. Twenty-three KnowledgePanel members participated in a pretest of the English language version that was administered May 10–14, 2024.

Respondents were randomized 1:1 to receive response options in order from either negative to positive valence (example: from ‘do not agree’ to ‘strongly agree’) or the reverse throughout the questionnaire. Where a question presented multiple statements for respondents to consider, the order in which those statements were presented was randomized unless ordering was necessary. Logic-driving questions (those to which responses might invoke a skip pattern) included non-response prompts.

We employed unipolar response arrays without a neutral midpoint (e.g., do not agree, somewhat agree, strongly agree, very strongly agree). The literature is not in agreement on whether such midpoints should be included [28, 29]. We were persuaded by the studies reviewed by Chyung et al. [28], which suggest that such midpoints allow respondents to choose “a minimally acceptable response as soon as it is found, instead of putting effort to find an optimal response,” a behavior known as satisficing. According to those authors, satisficing is particularly common when respondents are uncomfortable with the topics of the survey or under social desirability pressures, and both conditions apply here. Our analyses focus on responses above the “somewhat” or “sometimes” level to minimize the impact of potential satisficing on the results.

Statistical analysis

IBM SPSS Statistics, version 29 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY), was used for all analyses. Prevalence estimates were calculated as weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals (CI) using Complex Samples Frequencies; mean differences and mean scores were calculated using Complex Samples Descriptives.

Each survey item was ordinal and was subject to non-response. We report weighted frequencies for each item for each possible response. In addition, we summarized each item’s non-missing responses for a given year by assigning integer values (1, 2, or 3) to ordinal levels to produce an item score and then averaging them.

The proportion of respondents reporting that violence was usually or always justified to advance at least 1 political objective was calculated in 2 ways. In the unrestricted version, the computation for each respondent was based on all objectives presented to that respondent in that year. In the restricted version, the computation for each respondent was based on the 13 objectives presented to that respondent in all 3 years.

To rigorously describe between-year changes in survey responses, we accounted for the longitudinal study design by computing within-individual change scores and then summarizing those. To compute differences in percentage choosing a particular response, we created indicator variables for each year for each item and each possible response and then computed the within-individual change score between the two survey years for each item and response level. To compute differences in mean response scores, we computed within-individual change scores for the item scores, restricted to the sample of respondents with non-missing responses to the item in both years. Year-to-year change is based on the means of aggregated individual change scores, which have a potential range from 0 (no change) to ± 2. We use the notation “change x, 95% CI y, z” [30] to report changes in mean scores.

The survey was in the field when Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony charges in New York State Supreme Court at approximately 5 PM Eastern Daylight Time on May 30, 2024 [17]. We added a sensitivity analysis comparing responses on political violence items submitted before and after the convictions were announced.

Results

The 2024 completion rates were 88.4% (8896 respondents/10,064 invitees) overall, 91.6% (8185 respondents/8932 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2023, and 62.8% (711 respondents/1132 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2022 but not in 2023. The median survey completion time for all Wave 3 respondents was 22 min (interquartile range, 15.7 min). Item non-response for items included in this analysis ranged from 0.4 to 3.1%; only 1 item had a non-response percentage above 3.0% (Supplement, Additional File 1).

After weighting, half of the respondents (50.9%, 95% CI 49.5%, 52.3%) were female; 62.7% (95% CI 61.2%, 64.2%) were white, non-Hispanic (Table 1). The weighted mean (SD) respondent age was 48.5 (24.9) years. Nonrespondents were younger than respondents (unweighted mean (SD) ages 53.8 (17.5) and 56.8 (16.5), respectively) and less frequently male and white, non-Hispanic (Supplement, Additional File 1, Table S1).

Table 1 Personal characteristics of respondents

Democracy and the potential for violence

There were small but consistent increases in pro-democracy views from 2023 to 2024 (Table 2): increases in the view that it is very or extremely important for the United States to remain a democracy (change 0.040, 95% CI 0.024, 0.055) and that democracy is the best form of government (change 0.033, 95% CI 0.014, 0.053), and decreased support for the positions that democracy only serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful (change − 0.107, 95% CI -0.131, -0.083) and that having a strong leader is more important than having a democracy (change − 0.024, 95% CI -0.048, -0.001).

Table 2 Beliefs concerning democracy in the United States

There was no change from 2023 to 2024 in support for 3 statements about conditions in the USA justifying force or violence (Table 3). There was a small increase in expectation of civil war in the USA in the next few years (change 0.026, 95% CI 0.007, 0.045).

Table 3 Beliefs concerning the potential need for violence in the United States

American Society and Institutions

Four items explored beliefs on race and ethnicity (Table 4). There was a small decrease in agreement with the statement that “white people benefit from advantages in society that Black people do not have” (change − 0.043, 95% CI -0.062, -0.024) but also a small increase in agreement with the statement that “having more Black Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans is good for the country” (change 0.028, 95% CI 0.007, 0.049). There was a small increase in agreement with the central element of QAnon mythology (change 0.026, 95% CI 0.008, 0.044) but no change for items regarding end-time Christianity (Table 5).

Table 4 Beliefs concerning race and ethnicity and American society
Table 5 Beliefs concerning QAnon and biblical “end times”

Political violence

There was no change from 2023 to 2024 in support for the uncommon view that political violence is usually or always justified “in general” or in the prevalence of the belief that violence was usually or always justified to advance at least 1 political objective (2024: 26.2%, 95% CI 25.0%, 27.5%; 2023: 25.3%, 95% CI 24.1%, 26.5%) (Table 6).

Table 6 Justification for political violence, in general and for 9 specific objectives

Among 17 objectives considered individually (Tables 6, 7), there was a small increase in the belief that violence was justified in 5 cases: “to oppose the government when it tries to take private land for public purposes” (change 0.022, 95% CI 0.001, 0.042), “to stop police violence” (change 0.027, 95% CI 0.005, 0.050), “to reinforce the police” (change 0.025, 95% CI 0.003, 0.046), “to stop illegal immigration” (change 0.046, 95% CI 0.026, 0.067), and “to stop a protest” (change 0.046, 95% CI 0.027, 0.065). There was a small decrease in the belief that violence was justified “To prevent discrimination based on race or ethnicity” (change − 0.024, 95% CI -0.046, -0.003).

Table 7 Justification for political violence for 8 additional specific objectives*

The proportion of respondents who were not asked questions about their personal willingness to use force or violence to advance a political objective decreased slightly from 2023 to 2024 (− 2.9%, 95% CI -4.4%, − 1.3%) (Table 8). This reflects the small increase in respondents who considered political violence to be at least sometimes justified for at least 1 of the 17 specified objectives. Among those asked, there was no overall change in willingness to “damage property,” “threaten or intimidate a person,” “injure a person,” or “kill a person” (Table 8, Fig. 1).

Table 8 Personal willingness to engage in political violence, by type of violence
Fig. 1
figure 1

Difference in willingness to engage in political violence and expectation of firearm use. *Items 1–4: Personal willingness to use violence to achieve a political objective (very or completely willing). Items 5–8: Likelihood of using a gun in the future to achieve a political objective (very or extremely likely)

There were small increases in willingness to use force or violence to advance a political objective against 3 groups of people (Table 9): “a person who does not share your race or ethnicity” (change 0.048, 95% CI 0.029, 0.067), “a person who does not share your religion” (change 0.051, 95% CI 0.032, 0.070), and “a person who does not share your political beliefs” (change 0.042, 95% CI 0.023, 0.062).

Table 9 Personal willingness to engage in political violence, by target of violence

There were no changes from 2023 to 2024 in expectations of firearm possession and use in situations where respondents considered political violence to be justified (Table 10, Fig. 1).

Table 10 Future likelihood of firearm possession and use in a situation where political violence is perceived as justified

Supplemental analyses

In 2023 and 2024, participants were asked about the justification for force or violence to advance 2 additional political objectives. There was no change in support for violence “to protect the environment or stop climate change” or “to protect the rights of animals” (Supplement, Additional File 1, Table S2).

In 2022 and 2024, respondents were asked about their personal willingness to engage in violence by the social context of that engagement (Supplement, Additional File 1, Table S3). In 2024, respondents were less likely than in 2022 to “use force or violence on your own, as an individual” (change − 0.111, 95% CI, -0.135, -0.086) and more likely to “organize a group of people who share your beliefs to use force or violence” (change 0.072, 95% CI, 0.052, 0.092).

Sensitivity analysis

There were no differences between pre- and post-conviction respondents on any measures concerning violence; selected measures are presented in Table S4 (Supplement, Additional File 1, Table S4). Pre-conviction respondents more frequently agreed strongly or very strongly with the statement that “democracy is the best form of government,” (pre-conviction: 71.4%, 95% CI, 69.9%, 72.9%; post-conviction: 65.7%, 95% CI, 62.4%, 68.9%). There were no other differences between the groups on measures that did not concern violence.

Discussion

From 2023 to 2024, there were few changes on measures of support for or willingness to participate in political violence in the USA, and the observed changes were small and of questionable importance. This good news runs counter to our expectation that these measures would show increases during a presidential election year associated with heightened political polarization [1]. Two findings established in Wave 1 of the survey [9] have persisted through 202310 to mid-2024: the vast majority of respondents repeatedly reject political violence, and most of those who support it in principle would not want to participate in it themselves. Substantial proportions of those who currently expect to participate in violence are open to abandoning that expectation [15]. Perhaps the coupling of polarization with violence is not inevitable.

Our findings are concordant with those of other surveys from 2023 and early 2024 [31,32,33]. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) group, which tracks instances of political violence, reports no increase as of September 8, 2024 [34]. Conditions are fluid, however. A new ACLED analysis [35, 36] emphasizes, as others have [6, 7, 37, 38], that the risk of political violence—particularly by right-wing violent extremist groups—remains substantial.

Our sensitivity analysis did not show an increase in support for political violence in the days immediately following the announcement of the Trump felony convictions. This is consistent with the findings of an as-yet unpublished survey that found no increase in support for political violence immediately following an attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump [36].

There are many potential explanations for the absence of an increase in support for political violence in the USA in this election year. The most prominent outbreak of political violence in the USA’s recent history, the Capitol riots of January 2021, did not achieve its objective. More than 1,000 individuals have been convicted of crimes connected with that event, and hundreds of trials are still pending [39]. The fact that participation in political violence can have significant long-term adverse consequences likely serves as a deterrent for many potential participants. Separately, 2020 was not just an election year but a time of almost unprecedented social upheaval on many fronts in the USA; 2024, up to the time of the survey, was not.

What are the implications of these findings, and others from this 2024 survey [16], for prevention? Continued public awareness of the threat posed by political violence is essential. Members of the public, community and religious leaders, elected officials, and the media should openly and repeatedly declare their rejection of political violence. They can do this with an expectation that their efforts will have an impact; from 20 to 45% of those who expect to participate in political violence say that they would change their views if urged to do to by others [16].

Longer-term approaches should focus on structural reform and behavior change; intervening on underlying attitudes and beliefs has disappointingly little effect [1]. Recommendations for policy and social change have been developed [40,41,42,43]. To these should be added extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws, which allow for a temporary prohibition on the purchase and possession of firearms by people who are at high-risk of harming themselves or others. California has recently amended its law to require that judges evaluating ERPO petitions consider any evidence regarding “a recent threat of violence or act of violence directed toward another group or location, or a past history of those threats or acts.” [44] Other states should follow suit. Finally, the public should be encouraged to follow the maxim, “if you see something, say something”; many prevention measures depend on critical information about threatened violence getting to those in a position to do something about the threat [45].

Limitations

Several technical limitations exist. The survey was in the field in mid-2024 and could not detect changes in support for political violence that developed later, as elections approached. The findings are subject to sampling error, inattentive or strategic responses, and nonresponse bias. Arguably, nonresponse was most important in Wave 1; the response rates for Wave 2 (84%) and Wave 3 (88%) were high. A few outcomes are uncommon, with response weighted prevalences below 5%. The large study sample and small prevalence estimates result in relatively narrow confidence intervals in these cases. This analysis presents only population-wide trends and does not examine variation among subgroups. Other analyses of data from all waves of the survey have found large subgroup differences [11,12,13,14,15], most notably a remarkable degree of support for and willingness to participate in political violence among supporters of organizations such as the Proud Boys and social movements such as the militia movement [32]. These subgroup differences may change over time.

External events may have affected our findings. In 2022, widely publicized mass shootings occurred in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX while the survey was in the field; there were no comparable events during the fielding of the 2023 survey. The Buffalo shooting is understood to have been a race-related hate crime motivated by great replacement thinking and may have affected respondents’ views on race, violence, and that particular belief. In 2023, the survey closed just before the federal criminal indictment of Donald Trump was handed down; support for violence to return him to the White House increased immediately thereafter [46]. In 2024, the survey was in the field when convictions on those charges were announced, but our sensitivity analysis found no effect of that event on support for or willingness to participate in political violence. In all years, Russia’s war against Ukraine may have influenced responses on violence and democracy.

Conclusions

Findings from this large, nationally representative longitudinal survey indicate that from 2023 to 2024, there was little to no change in support for or willingness to participate in political violence in the USA. This hopeful finding was contrary to our expectation, as 2024 is an election year in the USA. The findings of this analysis will be useful in designing prevention efforts.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available as analyses are continuing but will be made available to qualified researchers subject to the terms of a data use agreement.

Abbreviations

SD:

Standard deviation

CI:

Confidence interval

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Acknowledgements

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Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Joyce Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation, and by the California Firearm Violence Research Center and UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program. External funders played no role in the design of the study; the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; or writing of the manuscript.

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GW: conception and design; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; drafting of manuscript. AC: conception and design; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; creation of new software; substantive revision of manuscript. ET: conception and design; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; substantive revision of manuscript. VP: conception and design; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; substantive revision of manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Garen J. Wintemute.

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Wintemute, G.J., Crawford, A., Tomsich, E.A. et al. Trends in views of democracy and society and support for political violence in the USA, 2022–2024: findings from a nationally representative survey. Inj. Epidemiol. 12, 4 (2025). https://doiorg.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/10.1186/s40621-024-00550-0

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