538:

It’s true that, over the past few years, polls have shown increasing shares of Americans saying — in one way or another — they may be OK with political violence…

When asked whether they agree with the statement, “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track,” 20 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed in a March Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll. And a June survey from NORC and the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats found 7 percent and 10 percent of Americans agreed that the “use of force is justified” to either restore Trump to the White House or prevent him from becoming president again, respectively.

But research suggests these numbers may be exaggerating how many Americans truly support political violence. Polls with a lot of disengaged respondents (i.e., those who were not totally paying attention when taking a survey) are susceptible to overestimating support for violence, and vague questions that don’t specifically spell out what exactly is meant by “political violence” can also skew the results, according to a 2022 paper published in PNAS. Researchers found that, when they adjusted for these flaws by using engagement checks (trap questions to make sure a respondent is paying attention) and more detailed descriptions of acts of violence, the actual support was much lower than previous studies had found.