More than 6 in 10 registered voters said they believe “extreme political rhetoric” contributed significantly to the murder 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 the United States’ confrontation with rising political violence and its root causes. The poll marks the first time, across questions about five different violent incidents over 15 years of NBC News polling, that there has been cross-party agreement that rhetoric played a major role in an attack, as opposed to the incident being more due to the actions of a single disturbed person.
Overall, 61% of respondents said they felt “extreme political rhetoric used by some media outlets and political leaders contributed significantly” to Kirk’s murder.
Another 28% said they “feel more like this was an incident caused by a disturbed person.” And 4% of those who participated in the survey volunteered, when presented with those two options, that they thought it was some of both.
Republicans blamed the rhetoric by the largest 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 rule it out.
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 that he had “had enough of her hate,” according to charging documents filed by the Utah County prosecutor.
President Donald Trump and his administration have broadly blamed the left for Kirk’s murder.
“We need to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown in recent years, and I think that’s part of the reason Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet,” Vice President JD Vance said while hosting Kirk’s eponymous show days after his death.
On the same program, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowed to “use every resource we have” in the federal government to root out a “vast domestic terrorist movement.”
The investigation has uncovered no evidence linking Robinson to left-wing groups, NBC News reported in September. Robinson’s mother told authorities that her son “had become more political and started leaning more to the left” in the year before Kirk was shot.
NBC News has studied Americans’ feelings about several attacks on political figures in recent years: the shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, at an event in her district in 2011; the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, at a baseball practice in 2017; the hammer attack of Paul Pelosi, husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on his home in 2022; and the attempted assassination of Trump at his Florida golf course in 2024.
The assassination attempt on 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 an NBC News poll that a majority of respondents overall pointed to rhetoric as a major factor in an episode of political violence.
In each incident, members of the victim’s political party are more likely to blame extreme rhetoric than a single individual. But more and more respondents have blamed the rhetoric of political and media figures.
The gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of extreme rhetoric as a factor was particularly wide in 2022, after Pelosi’s attack, and in 2024, after the second attempt on Trump’s life.
In 2022, 74% of Democrats said extreme political rhetoric influenced the attack on Pelosi, for which the perpetrator was also convicted of attempting to kidnap the then-House speaker. Forty-eight percent of independents and 25% of Republicans agreed.
In 2024, 76% of Republicans said rhetoric played a role in the assassination attempt on Trump, while 44% of independents and 39% of Democrats agreed.
Kirk’s murder was part of a disturbing series 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 House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death in June, and a shooter opened fire at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas in September, killing immigrants in custody after allegedly trying to attack agents.
The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Oct. 24-28 using a combination of phone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
