The public views of Jan. 6, the culpability of former President Donald Trump in contesting the election, and a question of whether violence against government would ever be justified are largely partisan, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and University of Maryland.
Jan. 6 has done that.
There are now 34% of Americans who believe violence against the government can be justified, a number The Washington Post reported is considerably higher than past polls for more than two decades.
"Not too many years ago, I would have said that those conditions are not possible, and that no such violence is really ever appropriate," Phil Spampinato, 73, an independent voter, told the Times.
The number was just 23% in 2015 and 16% in 2010, according to polls by CBS News and The New York Times.
Also, just 62% told the recent Post pollsters violence against government is never justified, a number considerably lower than polls in the 1990s that had as many as 90% saying it was never justified.
"The world we live in now is scary," Anthea Ward, a Republican mother of two who fears President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates for her children. "I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but sometimes it feels like a movie. It's no longer a war against Democrats and Republicans. It's a war between good and evil."
Still, there remains a largely partisan view of Jan. 6 and perceptions of Trump's "responsibility." Just 27% of Republicans say Trump bears a great deal or a good amount of responsibility for the storming of the Capitol.
But there are a majority of independents (57%) and an overwhelming majority of Democrats (92%) who pin the blame on Trump.
The partisan divide was also apparent in the belief Biden was not legitimately elected president, which has shrunk since Jan. 6. There are now 58% of Republicans who adopted that belief, compared to 70% from a January Post poll.
It would appear Jan. 6 caused that, too, but partisan rejections of election victors were apparent after Trump won in 2016, too. Democrats (67%) said Trump was not legitimately elected president then.
There is also a widely partisan view of those protesters who entered the Capitol. There were 78% of Democrats who believed the protesters were mostly violent, compared to 55% of independents and just 26% of Republicans.
The assaults of police officers were condemned by both parties and independents in the poll.
"That never should have happened in this country," Republican Trump voter Beverly Lucas, 75, told the Post. "It's a sobering idea that elected representatives should fear for their lives because of a mob."
"When in the course of human events the government no longer represents the people, and there is no recourse, then it might be time," she added with a caveat, "I don't think that will ever happen."
The Washington Post-University of Maryland polled 1,101 U.S. adults Dec. 17-19. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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