In a year shadowed by the killings of a conservative activist in Utah and of Democratic legislators in Minnesota, a new AP-NORC poll offers a quiet measure of how the country feels about its own fragility. Americans of different ages hold different levels of fear, with the young less alarmed by political violence than their elders. Even the question of whether free speech is under threat splits along party lines, revealing how the same events can be read in opposing ways. The poll records these feelings without fully explaining them, leaving the deeper reasons for the gap to be discovered in l
Younger Americans less concerned about political violence and free speech threats: AP-NORC poll
Younger adults are less worried about political violence than older adults.
Mark
What is the headline finding here?
Mimi
Younger adults are less worried about political violence than older adults, even after the killings of Charlie Kirk and the Minnesota legislators.
Mark
How worried is the country overall?
Mimi
About 4 in 10 adults are concerned about violence aimed at conservatives or at liberals.
Luke
That's the figure we can stand behind. Be careful with anything more precise on the age breakdown, because the text we have is scrambled.
Mark
And free speech?
Mimi
Americans are divided on how threatened it is, and the split follows party lines.
Luke
Right, but I can't give you the exact numbers. The garbled passage means those percentages aren't confirmed.
Mark
Who are the people quoted?
Mimi
Anderson, 23, a college student in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Jeff Logan, 27, a Republican from Milligan, Ohio, who worries about threats toward conservatives.
Luke
Notice we don't have their full quotes intact. And the poll says nothing here about why younger people feel less alarmed. Any explanation would be a guess.
Der Puls
- Roughly four in ten Americans worry about political violence aimed at conservatives or liberals, a tension running through a turbulent year.
- Young adults register noticeably less anxiety about violence from either side than the country as a whole.
- Democrats and Republicans sharply disagree on how much free speech is actually under threat.
- Voices like a 23-year-old Colorado student and a 27-year-old Ohio Republican put human faces on a divide that the numbers alone cannot explain.
In a year shadowed by the killings of a conservative activist in Utah and of Democratic legislators in Minnesota, a new AP-NORC poll offers a quiet measure of how the country feels about its own fragility. Americans of different ages hold different levels of fear, with the young less alarmed by political violence than their elders. Even the question of whether free speech is under threat splits along party lines, revealing how the same events can be read in opposing ways. The poll records these feelings without fully explaining them, leaving the deeper reasons for the gap to be discovered in later reckonings.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research examines how Americans are feeling after a year scarred by the assassinations of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah and of Democratic legislators in Minnesota. Its central finding is a generational gap: younger adults are less worried about political violence than older adults.
About four in ten U.S. adults say they are concerned about violence aimed at conservatives or at liberals. Among young adults, that anxiety runs lower than in the population overall, whichever side of the spectrum is in view.
The poll also explores freedom of speech, where Americans remain divided over how much it is under threat. That division follows party lines. The source text is garbled in places, so the precise figures on this question cannot be confirmed.
The findings are given faces through two people. Anderson, a 23-year-old college student from Fort Collins, Colorado, speaks for how many people his age see the moment, though his exact words are not recoverable. Jeff Logan, 27, a Republican from Milligan, Ohio, is worried about threats against conservatives, and his account of what has changed for him is also lost in the damaged text.
The poll is a snapshot rather than an explanation. It shows that both age and party shape how worried Americans feel, but it does not say why younger adults are less alarmed. Later releases from the survey may offer that answer.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research looks at how Americans are feeling after a year marked by the assassinations of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah and of Democratic legislators in Minnesota. Its central finding is a gap between generations: younger adults are less worried about political violence than older adults are.
About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they are concerned about political violence aimed at conservatives or at liberals. Among young adults, though, anxiety about violence from either side of the political spectrum runs lower than in the population overall.
The poll also touches on freedom of speech. Americans are currently divided over how far that freedom is under threat, and the divide follows party lines, with Democrats and Republicans reading the situation differently. The text available for this report is badly garbled in places, so the precise percentages on that question cannot be confirmed here.
The poll's findings are illustrated by two people at different stages of life. One is a 23-year-old college student from Fort Collins, Colorado, identified as Anderson, who was quoted describing how he and other people his age think about the moment. The exact wording of his remarks is not recoverable from the available text.
The other is Jeff Logan, 27, a Republican from Milligan, Ohio. He is concerned about threats and violence directed at conservatives, and he spoke about the political environment from that perspective. The garbled text also appears to include his comments on what had changed for him, but those lines cannot be reliably reconstructed.
The poll offers a snapshot of opinion rather than an explanation. It shows that age and party both shape how worried Americans are, but the available material does not say why younger adults feel less alarmed. Later releases from the survey may fill in that detail.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Younger adults are less worried about political violence than older adults.— AP-NORC poll finding as reported by the AP
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