Is the U.S. in a new era of political violence? Experts say it’s complicated

A surge of high-profile attacks has alarmed Americans, but researchers say it’s unclear whether political violence is truly increasing.

A cluster of high-profile political attacks is forcing Americans to ask a blunt question: are we sliding into a new era of political violence?. The fear has spread fast, driven by widely reported incidents and intense partisan debates.. Yet researchers who study political violence say it may be too soon to conclude that the country is experiencing a sustained increase in politically inspired brutality.

The most recent spike in alarm followed an incident on April 25. when a 31-year-old man stormed the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington. D.C.. during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.. President Donald Trump was in attendance.. Secret Service agents arrested the armed man before he could reach the ballroom. and he has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president.. That charge, if the case proceeds as alleged, would mark the third serious attempt on Trump’s life since 2024.. The man has entered a plea of not guilty to this and related charges.

That episode landed in a broader sequence of 2025 attacks that, taken together, have heightened public concern.. The report cited an arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. the murder of Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband. and the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.. For many Americans. the shared pattern is hard to ignore: multiple acts of violence tied to prominent political figures have made it feel as though political violence is accelerating.

But public perception and measurable trends do not always move in the same direction.. In a 2025 Pew Research Center poll conducted after Kirk’s assassination. 85 percent of respondents said they believed political violence was increasing in the U.S.. That view was attributed largely to partisan rhetoric. polarization. and what the survey described as an unwillingness to engage with people who hold different views.. Still. researchers say it remains uncertain whether these recent attacks represent a qualitatively new chapter—or whether they fit within a longer. cyclical pattern.

Joseph Young. a professor at the University of Kentucky who studies political violence. called the attacks troubling and said they may warrant a review of how to protect the president.. At the same time, he cautioned against interpreting the current moment as proof of a broader collapse toward civil conflict.. “But it doesn’t suggest this bigger issue. ” Young said in the report. warning that a dramatic narrative may outrun the evidence.

Sean Westwood. an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. offered a similar caution. arguing that Americans may suffer from “myopia” when looking at political violence.. In his view. the United States has experienced a relatively calm stretch compared with other periods in its history. and the current headlines may give an exaggerated sense of direction.. He and others emphasized that the United States has repeatedly faced periods of acute political conflict. making it difficult to label a new violent era based on limited data.

To understand why the debate is complicated, it helps to look at how frequently political violence has punctuated U.S.. history.. The report points out that during the late 1800s and early 1900s. several presidents were assassinated. including Abraham Lincoln. James Garfield. and William McKinley.. It also highlights the 1960s and 1970s, when the nation saw assassinations of John F.. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F.. Kennedy, Harvey Milk, and others, alongside hundreds of bombings linked to radical political groups such as the Weather Underground.

Quantifying that history is one reason experts are careful about big conclusions.. According to Dartmouth’s Polarization Research Lab. which tracks political violence in the U.S.. there were more than 120 “incidents” in 1970—covering assaults. assassinations. and bombings—while “last year” saw 10 such incidents.. Even with that kind of tracking. Westwood argued that it would be a serious mistake to claim that the country is now in a new violent era based solely on a small number of incidents.. He said researchers still can’t definitively determine the direction of the trend.

A major obstacle is that political violence is hard to study in a straightforward way. in part because investigators don’t always know what drove an attacker.. Westwood noted that some individuals involved in recent political attacks were not registered to vote and offered little explanation for their actions.. In the case of the Correspondents’ Association dinner. the report said the attacker allegedly left a note describing a plan to target Trump administration officials—but Westwood characterized that kind of explicit rationale as an exception rather than the rule.

Researchers also warn that people who appear to hold radical beliefs do not automatically fit a predictable pathway into violence.. Thomas Zeitzoff. a professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University and author of “Nasty Politics: The Logic of Insults. Threats. and Incitement. ” said there are risk factors that can influence violent behavior. but there is no single unique profile.. “There are a lot of people who hold maybe radical beliefs. but very few people actually act on them. ” the report conveyed.. That difference between belief and action matters, because it suggests that violent outcomes cannot be explained by ideology alone.

Even when analysts try to reconstruct radicalization after a crime, the approach can be methodologically biased.. Zeitzoff said that focusing on completed attacks forces research to start with people who have already committed violence. creating selection bias.. He compared it to a flawed inference—if researchers only find people who drank water after an event. they might mistakenly believe water involvement explains everything.. Without an appropriate control group. he argued. studies are less able to reveal which factors in everyday life actually led someone to act.

Another challenge is statistical: political violence is relatively rare, which yields small sample sizes.. Small datasets make it easier to miss patterns and harder to establish causality.. Zeitzoff also noted that extremists or ideologues may be reluctant to talk to researchers or may misrepresent their motivations. further complicating efforts to accurately categorize what happened and why.

Despite these uncertainties, experts said there is one reason the current moment may feel different from earlier periods—visibility.. Social media and modern media systems can amplify graphic material and spread it rapidly.. The report pointed to how. after Kirk’s killing. high-resolution footage of the assassination drew millions of views online. alarming public health experts.. The result is that the public doesn’t just witness violence; it witnesses it repeatedly. and often through highly shareable content.

At the same time, political rhetoric may also be contributing to the sense of escalation.. Zeitzoff said political language is “a lot more heated” now than in the recent past. potentially reaching a level of fervor not seen since the lead-up to the Civil War.. He emphasized that Republicans and Democrats show stronger antipathy toward the other party and deeper partisan identification than in earlier eras.. However. he also said that the idea of increased public support for violence is something he has not seen backed by compelling data.

Polling on public support for politically motivated violence is mixed. which reinforces the difficulty of translating fear into a verified trend.. The report cited a 2024 survey in which 22 percent of Democrats said they found the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson at least “somewhat acceptable.” It also referenced a 2022 analysis of multiple surveys totaling nearly 5. 000 people. where Westwood and colleagues found only about 3 percent supported partisan violence. and “nearly all respondents” said perpetrators should be criminally charged.

The evidence also cuts differently depending on what kind of support researchers measure.. In the days after the first Trump assassination attempt in 2024. Westwood and colleagues reported that Republicans became less supportive of political attacks on Democrats.. The report said their study found that “extreme partisan violence did not cause an immediate upsurge” in support for violence. and it described those conclusions in the authors’ writing.

That distinction has implications for how the country should respond.. If violence does not automatically broaden public endorsement. then intensifying rhetoric alone may not fully explain the presence—or the timing—of attacks.. Instead. experts’ caution suggests that prevention strategies need to be informed by better understanding of individual cases and reliable trend measures. not just by what headlines seem to be saying.

Even so, the emotional and institutional impact of recent events is real.. Young indicated that the attacks may merit rethinking how to protect the president. underscoring that regardless of long-term trends. specific threats can carry immediate consequences.. Meanwhile. Westwood’s longer historical framing suggests that American political life has repeatedly faced moments of danger. and that society has dealt with them without permanently entering a “new violent era.”

Westwood ended the report with a note of optimism: the country has survived tumultuous periods before. and it would be a mistake to treat a cluster of events as the end of the Republic.. “America is surprisingly resilient,” he said, adding that the U.S.. has weathered worse and is likely to endure this moment as well.. For researchers. the pressing task remains the same: untangling public perception. media visibility. and the underlying patterns that may or may not be changing.

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