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Will the 2024 election inspire more political violence? Since the 2020 riots protesting police brutality—which included intrusions at the White House complex [ [link removed] ]—and the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, concern that we might experience renewed political violence seems apt. Some of the news is not encouraging. Last year, attacks by right-wing extremists [ [link removed] ] left 17 people dead. Random attacks, such as one directed toward former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul [ [link removed] ], have highlighted the vulnerability of public officials and their families. U.S. Capitol Police report a significant increase in threats [ [link removed] ] to members of Congress—some 8,000 in 2023—and they anticipate even more threats this year.
Prominent scholars track some worrying public attitudes. University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape [ [link removed] ] notes that on both sides of the political divide, about 10% of the public supports violence as a means to resolve political disputes. Similarly, writing for the Journal of Democracy, [ [link removed] ]Rachel Kleinfeld notes that “4% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans believed in October 2020 that attacks on their political opponents would be justified if their party leader alleged the election was stolen.” Kleinfeld [ [link removed] ]observes how Americans are “affectively polarized” in that they tend to hate the opposing party, a trend that has been growing for years.
These tendencies push more alarmist analysts [ [link removed] ] into speculating that we’re close to civil war. Radical groups on the fringe may even want that to happen. For instance, a recent book by two prominent terrorism analysts [ [link removed] ] highlights the rise of right-wing “accelerationist” groups bent on attacking the government and society and places them in the long tradition of violent American extremism.
Nevertheless, developments since January 6 suggest we may have put a difficult era of political violence behind us. Countervailing signs indicate that Americans have more common sense and that the forces against violence and for law and order might be gaining the upper hand.
Political Violence in Perspective
Political violence makes up only a small subset of the total lethal incidents that occur in the U.S., which tends to obscure its significance. Amid the persistent drone of day-to-day, senseless violence, true acts of political violence often get drowned out. In the last few weeks, the media has focused on a Minnesota man [ [link removed] ] who killed three emergency responders, a deranged woman [ [link removed] ] who fired a rifle in a crowded church in Houston and two young men who opened fire [ [link removed] ] in a crowd in Kansas City to settle a dispute, killing one and wounding 22 others. While all of these are certainly violent incidents, none appear to have had political motives.
Still, when it does occur, political violence is absolutely a cause for worry. Even if these incidents are infrequent, they have an outsized impact if they undermine the public’s faith in public security, government institutions and the electoral process.
Political violence in the U.S. usually has occurred during periods of national stress—particularly during the early efforts to expand voting rights [ [link removed] ]. University of Texas professor Jeremi Suri argues that this effective violence [ [link removed] ] to intimidate Black voters was countered once the federal government started prosecuting offenders during the Grant administration (1869-1877) and again during the civil rights era (1954-1968).
But before 2020-2021, perhaps the most notorious outburst of political violence was the 1968 effort by the radical Students for a Democratic Society to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. As historian Luke A. Nichter relates in “The Year That Broke Politics,” [ [link removed] ] Students for a Democratic Society leaders planned the rioting over the course of months. Targeted political violence on a large scale normally requires organizational planning. While left-wing extremist groups were active in the 1960s and 1970s, their modern counterparts rarely commit acts of lethal violence, according to the nonpartisan Counterextremism Project [ [link removed] ]. Still, the Antifa rioting at the Trump inauguration in 2017 [ [link removed] ] helped jumpstart more recent political violence and provoked a reaction from far-right groups.
In recent decades, the far-right groups have accounted for most of the lethal political violence in the U.S. In the 1980s, small far-right race-based hate groups such as “The Order” [ [link removed] ] and the “National Alliance” [ [link removed] ] committed sporadic acts of political violence, but aggressive law enforcement curbed their worst excesses. Recently, far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers stress more anti-government themes. Yet their impact has been limited and the groups often short-lived. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware raise the alarm about far-right radicalism in their eye-opening book “God, Guns, and Sedition,” [ [link removed] ] but it is clear from their narrative that these groups remain fragmented, fractious and feckless. 
Extreme ideology by radical groups may be the immediate cause of political violence, but the root causes often run deeper. Kleinfeld argues that focusing on radical groups ignores a deeper trend [ [link removed] ]: the current tendency of individuals to self-radicalize and act on their own. The 2020 COVID lockdowns likely pushed some emotionally unstable individuals over the edge and toward greater acceptance of violent methods of protesting politics. Unlike violent criminals in general, these perpetrators tend to be older, married males with jobs. Kleinfeld notes that “Inequality and loneliness ... are factors highly correlated with violence and aggression.” Kleinfeld also highlights that “those undertaking planned hate crimes show greater signs of mental illness than does the general offender population.” Take the case of Austin Combs [ [link removed] ], who murdered a neighbor in 2022 because he thought he was a Democrat: Combs still hasn’t been ruled competent to stand trial following evaluations from forensic psychologists.
Self-radicalized individuals are contributing to the overall perception of incipient political violence—and the threats span the political divide. According to CNN [ [link removed] ], threats against political figures skyrocketed between Obama’s second term and Trump’s presidency, and they have remained high under Biden. Trump and Obama themselves received about the same amount of threats against them. Lately, members of both parties have been targeted almost equally.
Self-radicalized individuals also target election workers. A series of reports in Reuters in 2021 [ [link removed] ] detailed threats by some Trump supporters against election officials. Arrests for threatening election workers have been rare due to First Amendment protections. [ [link removed] ] But CNN has detailed [ [link removed] ] cases of threats against some senior Republican election officials whose states verified the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden. According to a 2022 poll commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice [ [link removed] ], one in six local election officials have experienced threats because of their role in elections; 77% say the threat appears to be increasing. Most blame social media for spreading the false electoral information that has made them the target of ire.  
Turning the Tide?
Nevertheless, the threat of political violence may have already crested. Despite some expert predictions [ [link removed] ] of renewed violence, the highly contested 2022 midterm elections were peaceful. Analyst Daniel Byman observed that the crackdown on far-right groups [ [link removed] ] like the Proud Boys and the Promise Keepers after the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot probably was why the midterm election in 2022 failed to see a repeat of political violence that marred the 2020 outcome.
Even before 2021, some signs pointed to the fading of these groups. “Alt-right” organizations and media personalities—more inclined to violent political rhetoric—have been steadily losing their appeal. As early as 2018, the political scientist George Hawley judged the alt-right [ [link removed] ] peaked after the 2017 “Unite the Right” Charlottesville rally, whose leaders have been fighting lawsuits ever since. In its 2024 report, the Anti-Defamation League acknowledges that lethal extremist attacks [ [link removed] ] also have declined since 2019. 
With the 2021 establishment of the Justice Department’s election task force, at least the authorities appear more prepared. As of August 2023, DOJ has charged 13 people for threatening [ [link removed] ] election officials. One Texas resident [ [link removed] ] last year was convicted of threatening a mass shooting of poll workers on a social media chat. These may seem like modest numbers, but most harassing incidents don’t reach the level of a federal crime. In 2022, the Justice Department reviewed 1,000 cases [ [link removed] ] but only 11% resulted in a criminal investigation. At the same time, more states have criminalized intimidation of election workers [ [link removed] ].
Likewise, the courts are exacting heavy penalties on media outlets that promoted false information about elections. Significant court rulings against media companies [ [link removed] ] reporting the false fixed election narrative—including a $800 million settlement against Fox News by a voting machine company—probably will make right-wing outlets more cautious about promoting groundless election fraud claims.
Finally, some evidence also suggests that more Americans are repelled by the violence of 2020 and 2021. Over time, many abandoned the idea that force was justified to restore Trump to the White House. According to a 2022 poll conducted by University of Chicago researchers [ [link removed] ], the number of Americans believing that declined sharply to 5%, with 83% believing that force was unjustified. This development demonstrated that people do indeed change their minds and, as political scientist Robert Pape put it, “that facts still matter.”
In light of these developments, how likely will political violence be this year? It is difficult to be certain, but several indicators suggest we are in a much better situation than we were in 2020-2021. Far from being fragile, the evidence suggests our democratic society has built-in resiliency. Although we were caught off guard in 2020, it seems unlikely the response would be as confused and ineffective a second time around.
In the short term, we can do little about underlying causes such as self-radicalization and mental health crises. However, more assertive law enforcement, stronger public messaging about election security and more restrained political speech probably will keep most political violence in check.
Irresponsible politicians are the key unknown variable. If former President Trump claims electoral fraud this year, will violent supporters respond by rioting? Or did they get the message from the sweeping crackdown on the January 6 rioters? Conversely, if Trump wins in November, will the radical left take up the “resistance” [ [link removed] ] cry again and protest violently? Politicians and the media alike need to monitor carefully what they say and discourage violence. To his credit, President Biden has publicly condemned political violence [ [link removed] ] on both sides. Trump, who recently predicted unrest [ [link removed] ] should his current court cases go against him, needs to follow suit.

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