Fear, Loathing, and Political Violence in the United States: Findings from a Nationally Representative Survey

Abstract

Objectives: To estimate prevalences of racism, hostile sexism, homonegativity, transphobia, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia in the United States; to estimate their associations, individually and collectively, with support for and willingness to engage in political violence.Methods: Findings are from Wave 2 of a nationally representative longitudinal survey of members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, conducted May 18-June 8, 2023. Prevalences are estimated based on levels of agreement with items in abbreviated versions of previously validated scales. Associations with political violence are estimated based on agreement with measures of support for or willingness to engage in such violence and are expressed as weighted proportions and adjusted prevalence differences, with p-values adjusted for the false discovery rate and reported as q-values.Results: The Wave 2 completion rate was 84.2%; there were 9,385 respondents. After weighting, 50.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.4%, 52.1%) of respondents were female and 62.7% (95% CI, 61.2%, 64.1%) were white, non-Hispanic; weighted mean (± standard deviation) age was 48.5 (25.9) years. Prevalences of strong agreement ranged from 3.2% (95% CI 2.6%, 3.7%) for antisemitism to 26.4% (95% CI 25.1%, 27.2%) for homonegativity and exceeded 10% in 4 of 7 cases. In all cases, significantly higher percentages of persons in strong agreement than in non-agreement supported political violence and were willing to engage in it; the largest differences were for Islamophobia and hostile sexism. Phobias with relatively lower prevalences of strong agreement tended to have stronger associations with political violence. Associations with political violence were larger for the 7 phobias combined than for individual phobias.Conclusions: Racism, hostile sexism, homonegativity, transphobia, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia were all strongly associated with support for and willingness to engage in political violence. These findings can help focus political violence prevention efforts in the United States.