56%. Then 67%. The Left and Killing Trump.

More Than Half. Then Two-Thirds. In Nine Months.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), partnered with the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab under director Joel Finkelstein, has published three “Assassination Culture” reports since 2025. The methodology is consistent: a Census-weighted sample of 1,264 U.S. adults asked to rate, on a 1–7 scale, how “justified” various acts of political violence would be. Anyone scoring 2 or above is counted as finding it “at least somewhat justified.”

April 7, 2025: 56% of left-of-center respondents said murdering Trump would be at least somewhat justified. The overall figure across all respondents was 38%. Right-of-center figures were not published in the April 2025 report.

January 21, 2026: the same question, same methodology, new sample. Left-of-center: 67%. An 11-point increase in nine months. The January report also found women were approximately 15% more likely than men to endorse assassination-culture content — a gender gap statistically significant at p < .05.

Strongest predictors of endorsing political violence: far-left political identity, high Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) scores, and heavy use of Bluesky.

The Gap Appears When Trump Is Named.

Tap any poll’s question text for methodology notes. Bars animate on scroll.■Democrat / Left  ■ Republican / Right

* Approximate figure — see methodology note. † CPOST Republican figure uses a related but distinct question wording; see source.

The Partisan Gap Is Real. It Requires a Named Target.

The polling literature on political violence divides into two camps and they tell genuinely different stories. NCRI asks whether it is justified to murder a specific named individual (Donald Trump). That question consistently returns high left-of-center numbers — 56–67% — and a large partisan gap where one side can be measured.

The Public Religion Research Institute’s standard time-series question — “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save our country” — is the most widely cited in academic literature precisely because it has been asked consistently since 2021. It shows no partisan gap. As of November–December 2025, Democrats were at 17% and Republicans at 19%on that question. NPR/Marist’s generic formulation shows the same pattern: Republicans slightly higher.

What the data shows in aggregate: the partisan gap in support for political violence is specific to Donald Trump as the named target. Ask about violence in the abstract, and Republicans are slightly higher. Ask about killing Trump specifically, and the left-of-center numbers spike dramatically. That is not a finding to soften — it is a finding to state precisely.

The Numbers Are Not Stable. They Are Climbing.

April 2025 to January 2026: left-of-center support for killing Trump rose from 56% to 67% on the NCRI/Rutgers scale — an 11-point increase in nine months.

On the Marist generic formulation, Democrats went from 12% in April 2024 to 28% in October 2025 — a 16-point increase over 18 months. This mirrors the NCRI trajectory in direction even though the absolute numbers differ because of the question framing.

The September 2024 RMG/Napolitan poll — conducted immediately after the West Palm Beach assassination attempt — found 28% of Democrats saying America would be better off if Trump had been killed that weekend. That is not a figure from a distant political hypothetical. That was an assassination attempt that had just happened, and more than one in four Democrats responded that it would have been a net positive for the country.

“Strongest predictors of endorsing assassination-culture content: far-left political identity, Left-Wing Authoritarianism, and heavy use of Bluesky.”

NCRI / Rutgers — Assassination Culture Report, April 2025

Not a Fringe. A Plurality of the Left.

Seven surveys. Four methodologically serious organizations — NCRI/Rutgers, CPOST/University of Chicago (gold-standard NORC panel), PRRI (the largest sample at 5,735), and RMG Research. The data is not monolithic and the question framing matters enormously. But the Trump-specific finding is consistent enough across independent surveys to warrant direct statement:

A plurality — and in the NCRI surveys, a supermajority — of self-identified left-of-center Americans say killing the president of the United States would be at least somewhat justified. That number rose 11 points in nine months. It is concentrated in far-left political identity, Left-Wing Authoritarianism, and heavy social media use on platforms associated with progressive media.

The PRRI and Marist data show that when the question is generic — violence to save the country, patriots resorting to force — Republicans remain slightly higher, consistent with a decade of prior polling. The asymmetry in 2025–2026 is not partisan rage in the abstract. It is, specifically and measurably, a left-of-center movement toward accepting violence against one named target.