A recent survey indicates that 6.9 percent of Americans are willing to use force to restore Donald J. Trump to the Presidency, but 11.6 percent — 12 million more — are willing to use force to prevent him from becoming President.
Among Republicans surveyed, 9.5 percent said they'd be willing to use force to restore Trump. Among Democrats, 16.1 percent said they'd be willing to use force to block him.
The survey was done by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), which is part of the University of Chicago. CPOST has been conducting surveys about U.S. political divisions and attitudes toward use of force every couple of months since the Jan. 6, 2021, riots.
CPOST regularly asked about the attitude of Trump supporters about use of force, but the most recent one , conducted in June and published in July, was the first one in which they asked about Trump opponents.
I find it significant that a higher percentage Trump opponents are willing to endorse the use of force than Trump supporters.
Also significant is how little interest there is in this fact. CPOST did not mention Trump opponents' attitude toward force in its executive summary or the text of the report — only in tables at the end.
This result would have gone unnoticed except for a student online newspaper called The College Fix, which is the source of the chart.
The number of Trump supporters who said they'd use force reportedly increased by 2.4 percentage points — about 6 million people — from the April to July reports. The College Fix reported:
"The public is more radicalized [in July] than it was in April and it's really quite significant," said Robert Pape, founding director of the project. "We've been tracking this quite a while, and this is a really big bump." [snip]
Pape said a more "radicalized public" alone is not sufficient for actual violence. He compared the situation to a "kindling" which would need something like Trump "light[ing] the fire" as he (allegedly) did on January 6, 2021. [snip]
While noting the Left has never engaged in anything like the January 6 "siege," Pape said "nonetheless, what we need to look at are the sentiments on both the right and the left that are being radicalized to millions and millions of Americans."
To keep things in perspective, 72.7 percent of Republicans opposed the use of force to ensure Trump is elected and 61.6 percent of Democrats opposed the use of force to prevent Trump's election.
An overwhelming majority of respondents across the political spectrum said they'd welcome a bipartisan statement by political leaders condemning the use of "force." (I assume they meant lawless force and not use of force to enforce the law.)
No comments:
Post a Comment