It’s an election year. Donald Trump and other Republican Party leaders have refused to commit to accepting November’s results. Trump has referred to those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as “warriors.”
There is growing concern that this year’s elections could lead to — or even be decided by — political violence.
My colleagues and I treat violence, including political violence, as a health problem. That’s not a conceptual stretch. Political violence on a large scale could kill and injure thousands of people and have a broad array of adverse effects on American society that would persist for generations.
The best approach to intervening in such problems starts with getting into the field and understanding them better. Beginning in 2022, our group has conducted a large, annual, nationally representative longitudinal survey of Americans’ support for and personal willingness to engage in political violence.
Many of our findings are deeply concerning. In 2022, nearly one-third of participants (32.8 percent) considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance at least one political objective.