About 30% of Republicans and more than one in six independents believe that “true American patriots” might be forced to take violent action to prevent the country’s downfall, a newly released poll has found.
The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll, which was conducted in September and released on Monday, showed that 18% of Americans overall believe patriots may have to take up arms to solve the nation’s problems. Even 11% of Democrats agreed with the premise that violence might be the answer to rescue America.
.@PRRIpoll team is releasing #AVS2021 today.
Troubling findings on violence:
30% of Republicans, and 39% of Republicans who most trust far-right news sources, agree
"True American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country.”https://t.co/mZyUYu8nPj— Robert P. Jones – Hidden Roots of White Supremacy (@robertpjones) November 1, 2021
PRRI posed the premise as follows: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Among the 31% of Americans who still believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, 39% agreed that political violence may be on the horizon.
Media outlets appear to be having a significant impact on views regarding violence. Among Republicans who most trust mainstream news, 22% agreed that political violence may be necessary. The ratio went up to 32% among Republican Fox News viewers and 40% among those who favor “far-right news,” PRRI said.
The survey also found an apparent religious correlation on the question of violence. Religious respondents were relatively likely to agree on the prospect of political violence – including 26% of white evangelicals, 23% of those who practice non-Christian religions, and 22% of Hispanic Catholics – while just 13% of non-religious Americans anticipate a possible patriot uprising.
PRRI found that 44% of all respondents still believe “God has granted America a special role in human history,” down a whopping 20 percentage points from eight years ago. Views on the issue varied sharply by political affiliation, with just one in three Democrats and more than two in three Republicans agreeing that America has a God-granted purpose.
Among all Americans who see the country as divinely destined – which PRRI described as “Christian nationalist sympathies” – 27% believe that patriots may have to resort to violence. Just 12% who disagreed with the notion of a God-granted special role bought the idea of political violence possibly being necessary to save the country.
The idea that America is too broken to be peacefully restored isn’t altogether new. A Zogby Analytics poll released in February – right on the heels of the US Capitol riot – found that 16% of respondents believe another American civil war is “very likely.” An additional 30% said such a conflict is “somewhat likely.” In fact, the combined 46% of Americans who said a civil war was likely to some degree exceeded the 43% who found the threat unlikely.
The country has been gripped by political violence over the past few years, including the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots in 2020 and the Capitol riot in January 2021. Unlike the more recent PRRI poll, Zogby’s survey found substantial agreement among people of different political persuasions, with 49% of Republicans, 45% of Democrats, and 42% of independents saying another civil war was likely.
Voters diverge on whether the American way of life is headed in the right direction. While 63% of Democrats told PRRI that the US culture and way of life has changed mostly for the better since the 1950s, just 29% of Republicans agreed.
Around 39% of Democrats also cheered the fact that the 2020 Census showed the first decline in the nation’s white population, the PRRI poll showed, but just 9% of Republicans saw the demographic downfall of the nation’s largest racial group as “mostly positive.”
Support for building a wall on the nation’s southwest border has grown, with 45% of Americans favoring such a project in the latest PRRI survey, up from 41% in 2016, when the issue helped propel Trump to victory in that year’s presidential election.