Most Americans say Republicans and Democrats have “gone too far” with political rhetoric following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Gallup Poll reported Wednesday.
The research firm found that 60% of adults responding to a poll after the conservative activist was killed during a Sept. 10 public debate at Utah Valley University faulted Democrats and their supporters for using too much “inflammatory language to criticize their political opponents.”
That’s up from the 51% who said the same when Gallup last posed the question in 2011 after then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, was wounded and six others were killed in a shooting.
Gallup found that 69% of adults surveyed this year blamed Republicans and their supporters for going too far, up from 53% in 2011.
“While partisans are reluctant to blame their own side for going too far with the tone of their political rhetoric, they are generally in agreement on the major factors contributing to political violence in the U.S.,” Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup’s senior editor, wrote in a summary of the findings.
Mr. Jones pointed to a “sharp increase” in political threats and violence for driving more adults to blame the other political party and excuse their own.
He noted that a separate Gallup survey in November found most Americans blaming “the spread of extremist views on the internet” for the growing problem.
“Since Giffords was shot over a decade ago, additional incidents of political violence have occurred, including a mass shooting at a congressional baseball practice in 2017 that wounded Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and three others, the two assassination attempts on Trump last year, the slaying of the Democratic Minnesota House speaker and her husband in June, and the murder of Kirk in September,” Mr. Jones added.
Gallup found that 94% of Democrats surveyed this year said Republicans and their supporters have gone too far in encouraging such violence, up from 74% of those surveyed in 2011.
But only 28% of Democrats blamed their own party for adding to the rhetorical excess, down from 45% in 2011.
Among Republicans, 93% said that Democrats have gone too far, up from 63% in 2011. Just 36% blamed the GOP for inflammatory rhetoric, a slight increase from 32% of Republicans in 2011.
Gallup found political independents “significantly more likely than in 2011 to view both sides as having gone too far.”
That included a 22-point jump to 74% of independents who flagged the GOP and a 14-point jump to 62% who dinged the Democratic Party.
Gallup conducted the randomized national telephone survey of 1,000 adults from Oct. 1-16. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
