Headline Roundup • January 27th, 2026
What Do Americans Think About Political Violence?
Political Violence,Data,AllSides,Gallup Polls,Polarization,Political Polarization,Threats To Democracy,Democracy
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Data: A Kettering Foundation and Gallup (Center bias) poll in November 2025 found that 83% of respondents agreed "it is never OK for people to use violence to achieve a political goal." A YouGov (Center) survey found that 87% of Americans think political violence is a problem. In a December 2025 Gallup survey, respondents identified the top three reasons they believe cause political violence as the spread of extremist viewpoints online, inflammatory language from prominent politicians or political commentators, and the failure of the mental health system to identify individuals who are a danger to others.
AllSides Research: On Nov. 6, AllSides held a National Roundtable on Political Violence with Newsweek. The Roundtable broke the participants into small deliberative groups for a conversation about the topic, and AllSides later analyzed anonymized transcripts of the conversations in a report. The report found that the definitions people shared of political violence varied, with some including hate speech as a form of violence while others did not. It found that political violence is perceived to be driven by dehumanization, fear, echo chambers, institutional distrust, and disconnection. Combating political violence requires media literacy, education, local engagement, dialogue across divides, and collective action, participants said. Participants also emphasized the necessity of contextualizing political violence within historical examples to understand its patterns and severity. Read the full report.
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Featured Coverage of this Story
The following report details the findings of a national event on political violence held on November 6, 2025. A total of 637 participants—diverse in political ideology, age and geography—held 90 minute conversations in small groups designed to provide civil, thoughtful understanding across differences. Using a mixed-methods approach that combined large-scale, small group dialogue with pre- and post-event surveys, this study captured how Americans understand political violence, what they believe drives it, and how they think it can be prevented.
The findings built on recent national surveys showing concern about political...
Across the country – and across the political spectrum – Americans see politically motivated violence as on the rise in the United States.
But there is much less public consensus about the reasons for politically motivated violence in recent years. And there are wide partisan gaps over how much of a problem they think extremism from the left or the right is for the country.
A Pew Research Center survey of 3,445 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 22-28 finds that, overall:
Gallup
Larger majorities of Americans than in the past believe that both the Democratic and Republican parties and their supporters have gone too far in using inflammatory language to criticize their opponents. Sixty-nine percent now say this about the Republican Party and Republicans, a 16-percentage-point increase from 2011, and 60% currently believe this applies to the Democratic Party and Democrats, which is nine points higher than 14 years ago.
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