Reassessing Support for Political Aggression and Violence in the United States

Abstract Recent events have driven a surge in scholarly attention to public support for political violence in the United States. Yet, research paints a conflicting picture about the levels and correlates of support for violence. We argue that these disagreements are partly due to researchers’ measurement choices. After reviewing common practices and identifying measurement challenges, we introduce a measure designed to overcome these problems that allows respondents to choose their target of aggression. Across multiple studies, we compare our measure to two common alternatives. While we find similarities, our measure uncovers substantially more support for aggression and violence, particularly among weak partisans, holding implications for the levels and correlates of support for aggression. Further, by design, our measure provides information about the type of aggression that is endorsed and the most common targets. We conclude with recommendations for researchers studying support for political aggression.