When after all it was you, not me, part 2

 Following up on some of the points in my last post:

1.  The Pew Research Center did some experiments with opt-in vs. probability-based online surveys.  As I suggested, it seems that many opt-in respondents aren't paying attention (or aren't taking the survey seriously)--they're just rushing through in order to get paid. But the Pew results were even worse than I expected, with the opt-in surveys producing some clearly nonsensical distributions of answers.  

2.  I said that general questions about whether violence is ever acceptable to achieve political goals weren't very informative--questions about how you felt about particular examples of violence would be better, but there aren't many of them.  I found one interesting example, from a 1968 Harris survey done for the National Commission the the Causes and Prevention of Violence.  They asked about how people felt after a number of (then) recent assassinations of political figures.  One of the sets of questions asked if they felt sad, leaning towards sad, in between, leaning towards relieved, or relieved on hearing of the event.  The distributions (for those who said they had heard about the assassination in question):

                                          Sad         in between     Relieved
JFK                                      88%            4%                    1%
RFK                                     84%            7%                    1%
King                                     60%          24%                    7%
Evers                                    52%          35%                    4%
Malcolm X                           24%          52%                  15%
George Lincoln Rockwell*  18%          54%                  17%

None of those people are really comparable to Charlie Kirk, but the results show that we shouldn't be surprised when some people have mixed or even positive feelings after the assassination of a controversial public figure.  Of course, we didn't have social media back in 1968, so those sentiments were less visible.

3.  The Harris survey also asked about a hypothetical case in which "Your Senator has blocked legislation which you believe is essential to protect the rights of every citizen. The Senator has come to your town and is making a speech in a public auditorium to gain support for his point of view," and whether you think that some kinds of protest would be "all right to take."  It also asked if "some of your friends" would think they were all right:

                                                                         You             Friends
Carry signs expressing disapproval                   74%           71%
Boo during pauses                                             29%            38%
Boo and stamp feet until he has to stop            13%             24%
Throw rotten tomatoes                                        4%             10%
Throw bottles**                                                  1%              6%
Use a gun or other weapon to inflict harm          1%              2%

4.  It occurred to me that there is another question that is relevant to political violence.  The General Social Survey has regularly asked "would you approve of a policeman striking a citizen who has said vulgar and obscene things to the policeman?"  Approval among self-described liberals and conservatives:

Approval is higher among conservatives, but the size of the gap changes:  it declined, but has increased in recent years.  The ratio of conservative to liberal approval:

It's not possible to put a precise date on when the ratio began to rise, but it has been consistently high in the Trump years:  2016 set a new high, which was broken in 2018 and again in 2024.  Although the question is not explicitly about political violence, it is relevant because one kind of political violence involves defending "law and order," even if that involves violating the law.  It's easy to imagine applications, like unofficial efforts to ensure "election integrity" or enforce immigration laws.  

*Rockwell was the leader of the American Nazi Party.  
**The question said "empty bottles or other objects which could not do serious or permanent harm."  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]