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Americans see left and right violence as equal issues. The data doesn’t. [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2025-09-12

There’s a wide gap between right-wing and left-wing violence in the U.S.—and it doesn’t line up with what many Americans believe.

A YouGov poll released late Wednesday found that Americans are almost evenly split on which side poses a greater threat: 31% say left-wing violence is a bigger issue, 33% say right-wing violence is, and 36% weren’t sure. The partisan divide was clear—two-thirds of Republicans blamed the left, while 62% of Democrats expressed more concern about the right.

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However, the data on political violence shows a much more lopsided situation.

A 2021 study published in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society analyzed ideologically motivated extremist killings from 1990 to 2020. The results were clear: Only 42 incidents of politically motivated homicide, or 15.6% of all incidents, involved far-left extremists. In contrast, far-right extremists were responsible for 227 incidents—84.4% of the total.

“A far-right ideologically motivated homicide has occurred at least once every year since 1990,” the study’s authors wrote. “By comparison, far-left ideologically motivated homicides were present for only 17 years of the 31-year timespan of the current analysis.”

And this pattern of far-right violence hasn’t slowed since 2020, the final year included in the study’s data.

This combo from photos provided by Minnesota Legislature shows, from left, state Sen. John A. Hoffman and state Rep. Melissa Hortman.

For instance, the study doesn’t include the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, for which President Donald Trump later pardoned his supporters. And in October 2022, an assailant broke into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence was set on fire while his family was sleeping inside. Then in June, a gunman targeted Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, killing state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife inside their home.

Right-wing violence isn’t just persistent—it’s accelerating. Yet many prominent officials, including the president, have downplayed or even excused it. The killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday has emboldened far-right voices to call for “war”-like retaliation against the left, even as Trump frames right-wing radicals as well-meaning.

“I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “The radicals on the left are the problem.”

That narrative doesn’t hold up. The aforementioned study makes one thing clear: The far-right has been the driving force behind ideologically motivated killings for decades. And it’s not the only research to draw that conclusion.

A 2022 study published by the highly regarded scientific journal PNAS found that right-wing extremists are more likely to engage in political violence than their left-wing counterparts. Researchers tied that risk to personality traits often associated with right-wing ideology, such as closed-mindedness, dogmatism, and a heightened need for order and certainty, all of which can intensify in-group bias and hostility toward outsiders.

Law enforcement tapes off an area after Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was shot at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 in Orem, Utah.

By contrast, the study found that left-leaning individuals tend to score higher on openness and tolerance for ambiguity, and are less likely to support social dominance—factors that correlate with a lower risk of using violence. Other studies have even identified an “empathy gap” between liberals and conservatives, which may help explain the frequency of far-right attacks.

Even federal agencies have been sounding the alarm. In early January, the Justice Department warned that militant white-supremacist and nationalist violence continues to rise. Since 1990, far-right extremists have carried out more than 520 killings, compared to just 78 by far-left extremists. A Department of Homeland Security threat assessment flagged immigration grievances, election denialism, and even pandemic stress as likely drivers of attacks in the years ahead.

So what accounts for why the public is split on whether left- or right-wing violence is more of a problem?

Part of that divide may stem from how incidents are presented. Violence against right-wing figures is often assumed to originate from the left, but that’s not always the case. Both of Trump’s would-be assassins last year had complex political backgrounds: One was a registered Republican but donated to a liberal group, and the other was a 2016 Trump voter who turned against him and whose most recent voter registration was unaffiliated with any party.

Left-wing violence, while far less common, has been inching up in recent years. The 2021 Criminology study found that “far-left violence has increased over the last five years” and that “while far-right extremists are responsible for a higher frequency of incidents, far-left extremists more often kill more than one individual.” But the researchers caution that under the right social and political conditions, the threat could grow well beyond its historic baseline—one reason they call for data-driven strategies to address domestic extremism across the spectrum.

For now, the greatest danger is obvious. Right-wing violence isn’t a relic of the past—it’s an active and larger threat. Experts warn that continuous talk of “stolen elections,” immigrant “invasions,” and revenge is further stoking a fire, meaning the next attack is not a matter of if but when. The real question is whether the country will respond before more lives are lost.

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