I appreciate the good intentions here, but I don’t buy it. If America genuinely opposed political violence, Trump wouldn’t be president, thousands of Jan 6th insurrectionists wouldn’t have been pardoned, and Kirk would have been soundly evicted from the Republican Party for his comments on Paul Pelosi and Biden. Similarly, Luigi Mangione wouldn’t have obtained folk hero status for a meaningful percentage of the left (at least temporarily), and liberals on Bsky probably would have been more restrained in highlighting Charlie Kirk’s bigotry immediately after his murder.
Personally, I’m suspicious that polling is an effective vehicle for understanding such sensitive subjects, where people may be reasonably hesitant to say what they really think to a third party. Furthermore, on the topic of political violence, I suspect that many people are unwilling to admit their true feelings even to themselves.
Good and very important post. It's also worth noting that even the 4% estimate is almost certainly a sizable overestimate because of misclassification bias. The short version of this argument is that surveys are bad at estimating the size of extremely small groups because even a small measurement error (e.g. clicking yes when you meant to click no, misreading the question as being against violent felonies instead of in favor of violent felonies), multiplied by the vast majority of respondents who are not in the population, will still result in greatly overstating the percentage of people in the very small group. Removing obviously inattentive respondents probably reduces this bias, but does not eliminate it.
I personally find this figure hard to believe. I live in a deep blue part of a deep blue state and work in a deep blue occupation and have mostly deep blue friends and associates, and I can't think of anyone I know who would endorse murder. And yet, I can't see anything obviously methodologically problematic about the survey.
Perhaps I, too, have gentle leftist and leftist friends, but none of them approves of Kirk's murder even though they are unanimous in rejecting his message. Same is true of those whom I take seriously when I read their posts. An you figure out why Bright Line gets this number?
This is exactly the kind of thoughtful analysis missing from most "news." Who wants to read a story heaadlined "Less Than 5% of Country Supports Political Violence" vs "Over 30% Say Political Violence Can Be Justified"? How many news subscriptions or TV viewers does that get you? Sheesh!
NPR used to have higher standards.
I appreciate the good intentions here, but I don’t buy it. If America genuinely opposed political violence, Trump wouldn’t be president, thousands of Jan 6th insurrectionists wouldn’t have been pardoned, and Kirk would have been soundly evicted from the Republican Party for his comments on Paul Pelosi and Biden. Similarly, Luigi Mangione wouldn’t have obtained folk hero status for a meaningful percentage of the left (at least temporarily), and liberals on Bsky probably would have been more restrained in highlighting Charlie Kirk’s bigotry immediately after his murder.
Personally, I’m suspicious that polling is an effective vehicle for understanding such sensitive subjects, where people may be reasonably hesitant to say what they really think to a third party. Furthermore, on the topic of political violence, I suspect that many people are unwilling to admit their true feelings even to themselves.
Good and very important post. It's also worth noting that even the 4% estimate is almost certainly a sizable overestimate because of misclassification bias. The short version of this argument is that surveys are bad at estimating the size of extremely small groups because even a small measurement error (e.g. clicking yes when you meant to click no, misreading the question as being against violent felonies instead of in favor of violent felonies), multiplied by the vast majority of respondents who are not in the population, will still result in greatly overstating the percentage of people in the very small group. Removing obviously inattentive respondents probably reduces this bias, but does not eliminate it.
An example of this error being used to erroneously claim that the CCES shows non-citizen voting: https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/news/perils-cherry-picking-low-frequency-events-large-sample-surveys#:~:text=Hence%2C%20a%200.1%20percent%20rate,no%20non%2Dcitizens%20actually%20voted.
If you prefer an example from the opposite political valence, here is a paper overestimating the percentage of Americans who have witnessed a mass shooting: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/22/its-jama-time-junk-science-presented-as-public-health-research/
thanks for links Dan!
Good post. It seems worth pointing out, though, that Bright Line found more recently that 12% of Democrats approved of Kirk's killing: https://brightlinewatch.org/violence-redistricting-and-democratic-norms-in-trumps-america/
I personally find this figure hard to believe. I live in a deep blue part of a deep blue state and work in a deep blue occupation and have mostly deep blue friends and associates, and I can't think of anyone I know who would endorse murder. And yet, I can't see anything obviously methodologically problematic about the survey.
Perhaps I, too, have gentle leftist and leftist friends, but none of them approves of Kirk's murder even though they are unanimous in rejecting his message. Same is true of those whom I take seriously when I read their posts. An you figure out why Bright Line gets this number?
This is exactly the kind of thoughtful analysis missing from most "news." Who wants to read a story heaadlined "Less Than 5% of Country Supports Political Violence" vs "Over 30% Say Political Violence Can Be Justified"? How many news subscriptions or TV viewers does that get you? Sheesh!