Republicans and Democrats vastly overestimate how much the other side supports political violence, paper finds

Violent protest in Portland.
(Image credit: Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Americans, including political scientists and pundits, are probably overestimating how much their political opponents support partisan acts of violence, a new study from researchers at Stanford University, Dartmouth University, and University of California, Santa Barbara suggests.

After conducting three large survey experiments, the authors found that previous research indicating that up to 44 percent of the American public approves of politically-motivated violence in hypothetical scenarios has vastly overestimated the situation. That estimate may be somewhere between 30 percent to 900 percent too high.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.