More than 6 in 10 registered voters said they think “extreme political rhetoric” was an important contributor to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year — including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to the latest NBC News poll.
The findings represent a grim milestone in America’s reckoning with growing political violence and its root causes. The survey marks the first time, across questions about five different violent incidents over 15 years of NBC News polling, that there has been cross-partisan agreement that rhetoric played an important role in an attack, as opposed to the incident having been more about the actions of a single disturbed person.
Overall, 61% of respondents said they feel that “extreme political rhetoric used by some in the media and by political leaders was an important contributor” to Kirk’s killing.
Another 28% said they “feel more this is an incident caused by a disturbed person.” And 4% of those who participated in the poll volunteered, when presented with those two options, that they thought it was some of both.
Republicans blamed rhetoric by the widest margin, 73%-19%, but independents (53%-28%) and Democrats (54%-34%) were also much more likely to blame extreme political rhetoric as a factor than to discount it.
Tyler Robinson, 22, faces murder and other charges in Utah for allegedly killing Kirk. Investigators discovered text messages Robinson sent after the shooting of Kirk in which Robinson wrote he “had enough of his hatred,” according to charging documents filed by the Utah County prosecutor.
President Donald Trump and his administration have blamed the left broadly for Kirk’s assassination.
“We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet,” Vice President JD Vance said while hosting Kirk’s eponymous show days after Kirk was killed.
On the same show, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowed to “use every resource we have” in the federal government to uproot a “vast domestic terror movement.”
The investigation has not uncovered evidence linking Robinson to left-wing groups, NBC News reported in September. Robinson’s mother told law enforcement that her son “had become more political and had started to lean more to the left” in the year preceding the shooting of Kirk.
NBC News has surveyed Americans’ feelings about several attacks on political figures in recent years: the shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., at an event in her district in 2011; the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., at a baseball practice in 2017; the hammer attack of Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at their home in 2022; and the attempted assassination of Trump at his Florida golf course in 2024.
The attempted assassination of Trump in September 2024 — the second attempt on his life in a matter of months, following the July shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — was the first time in NBC News polling that a majority of respondents overall pointed to rhetoric as an important factor in an episode of political violence.
In each incident, members of the victim’s political party have been more likely to pin blame on extreme rhetoric than on just one individual. But more respondents have blamed rhetoric from political and media figures each time.
The gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of extreme rhetoric as a factor was particularly wide in 2022, after the Pelosi attack, and in 2024, after the second attempt on Trump’s life.
In 2022, 74% of Democrats said extreme political rhetoric played a role in the Pelosi attack, for which the perpetrator was also convicted on charges of attempting to kidnap the then-speaker of the House. Forty-eight percent of independents and 25% of Republicans agreed.
In 2024, 76% of Republicans said rhetoric played a role in the attempted assassination of Trump, while 44% of independents and 39% of Democrats agreed.
The Kirk assassination was part of a troubling string of violent and deadly attacks against political figures and institutions this year. High-profile incidents include when an arsonist set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence in April, former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed in June, and a shooter fired on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas in September, killing immigrants in custody after allegedly trying to target agents.
The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Oct. 24-28 via a mix of telephone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
