LONDON, July 26 (Xinhua) -- A growing number of Americans believe in the use of force to attain political goals, according to a recent survey conducted by the University of Chicago and shared exclusively with The Guardian.
The Dangers to Democracy survey indicates that a growing number of Americans support the use of political violence as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up and further indictments of former U.S. President Donald Trump are probably imminent, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The University's Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPost) research center has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on political violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021.
According to the survey conducted by CPost in late June, the number of Americans who believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the White House increased by roughly 6 million in the last few months to an estimated 18 million people.
Of those 18 million people, 68 percent believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and 62 percent believe the prosecutions of Trump are intended to hurt his chances in 2024. An estimated 7 percent of Americans now believe violence could be necessary to restore Trump to the presidency, up from 4.5 percent, or 12 million people, in April.
The most recent report marks the first increase in radical, violent support for Trump since April 2022, according to Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who directs CPost.
"We've been tracking this quite a while, and this is a really big bump," said Pape, adding that a radicalized public isn't enough for actual violence to occur, but Trump would have to give a speech or rally inciting people to act at a certain time to light the fire, as he did in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
"The indictment is radicalizing support for Trump, but that's not the only source of radicalization," said Pape. "You're seeing growing anger and radicalization on the left as well."
The survey also found support for the use of force to coerce members of Congress to "do the right thing" grew from 9 percent in January to 17 percent at the end of June, with the sharpest rise among Democrats.
Support for violence to restore the federal right to abortion also increased during this time, although there's little indication that any organized groups support acting on this belief. ■
