Majorities across parties say ‘extreme political rhetoric’ was a contributor to Charlie Kirk’s killing
More than 6 in 10 registered voters said they believed “extreme political rhetoric” contributed significantly to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year — including a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to the latest NBC News poll.
These findings represent an important step in America’s reckoning with growing political violence and its root causes. The survey marks the first time, across questions covering five different violent incidents in 15 years of NBC News polling, that there has been cross-party agreement that rhetoric played a significant role in an attack, as opposed to the fact that the incident was more about the actions of a single disturbed person.
Overall, 61 percent of respondents said they believed “extreme political rhetoric used by some in the media and by political leaders contributed significantly” to Kirk’s killing.
28% said they “feel more like it was an incident caused by a disturbed person.” And 4% of those who participated in the survey said, when presented with these two options, that they thought it was one of the two.
Republicans largely blamed rhetoric, 73 to 19 percent, but independents (53 to 28 percent) and Democrats (54 to 34 percent) were also much more likely to blame extreme political rhetoric as a factor rather than ignore it.
Tyler Robinson, 22, faces murder and other charges in Utah for allegedly killing Kirk. Investigators discovered text messages sent by Robinson after Kirk’s shooting in which Robinson wrote that he was “had enough of his hatred,” according to charging documents filed by the Utah County district attorney.
President Donald Trump and his administration have largely placed blame for Kirk’s assassination on the left.
“We need to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown over the last several years, and I believe 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 Kirk’s death.
In the same broadcast, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pledged to “use every resource we have” within the federal government to root out a “vast domestic terrorist movement.”
The investigation did not turn up evidence linking Robinson to left-wing groups, NBC News reported in September. Robinson’s mother told law enforcement that her son “became more political and started leaning more to the left” in the year before Kirk’s shooting.
NBC News asked 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., during baseball practice in 2017; the gavel attack on 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.
Trump’s September 2024 assassination attempt — the second assassination attempt in a matter of months, following the July shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — marked the first time in an NBC News poll that a majority of respondents overall highlighted rhetoric as a significant factor in an episode of political violence.
In each incident, members of the victim’s political party were more likely to blame extremist remarks rather than a single individual. But each time more and more respondents 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 Trump’s second assassination attempt.
In 2022, 74% of Democrats said extreme political rhetoric played a role in Pelosi’s attack, for which the perpetrator was also convicted of attempting to kidnap the then-House Speaker. Forty-eight percent of independents and 25 percent 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.
Kirk’s assassination was part of a disturbing series of violent and deadly attacks on 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 gunman fired shots at 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 combination of telephone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
