• More than 50% MAGA Republicans considered violence usually or always justified to advance at least 1 of 21 specified political objectives (MAGA Republicans, 55.9%; non-MAGA non-Republicans, 25.5%).
• MAGA Republicans were more likely than non-MAGA non-Republicans to predict civil war “in the next few years” (10.4% and 5.4%, respectively) and to agree that “the United States needs a civil war to set things right” (7.8% and 2.4%, respectively).
• MAGA Republicans more frequently predicted that they would be armed with a firearm in a setting where they considered political violence justifiable (19.8% and 5.5%, respectively).
• MAGA Republicans were not more willing than non-MAGA non-Republicans to damage property, threaten someone, injure someone, shoot someone, or kill someone to advance a political objective. They were more often willing to commit political violence as a lone actor (6.9% and 2.8%, respectively) but not as part of a group.
• MAGA Republicans were more likely than non-MAGA non-Republicans to endorse many beliefs that have been associated with political violence. These included racism, hostile sexism, homonegativity, transphobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia; conspiracism; support for QAnon, Christian nationalism, and authoritarianism; and the view that intimate partner violence can be “understandable.”

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

These findings are consistent with a large body of research demonstrating that the threat of political violence in the United States arises primarily from the political right. (Preliminary, unpublished data from the 2025 wave of the survey indicate that this did not change following the 2024 elections.)

The findings’ implications are mixed. On one hand, MAGA Republicans who are unwilling to commit political violence themselves might serve as credible messengers in efforts to dissuade others for whom political violence is a personal option. At the same time, this large and influential group of people with a shared political identity and a shared belief that political violence is justified can create a climate of acceptance and raise the risk that political violence will occur.

A key question remains: Do MAGA Republicans who justify but will not participate in violence take that latter position because they think that violence is wrong, or simply because they would rather others do the work (and take the risks) for them?

METHODS

Findings are from Wave 3 of a nationally representative annual cohort survey, conducted online May 23 to June 14, 2024. Participants were members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. There were 8,896 respondents for this analysis; the completion rate among those eligible to participate was 88.4%.

Citation

Wintemute GJ, Velasquez B, Robinson SL, Tomsich EA, Wright MA, Shev AB. The MAGA movement and political violence in 2024: findings from a nationally representative survey. Injury Epidemiology. 2025 Dec;12(1):78.

Learn More

• An early version of this was published in 2025 as a working paper on SocArXiv
• A visual abstract for the preprint version of this paper is available in our visual abstract archive