DES MOINES, Iowa — Republicans’ outlook on the direction of the country has soured dramatically, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted shortly after last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The share of Republicans who see the country headed in the right direction fell sharply in recent months, according to the September survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Today, only about half in the GOP see the nation on the right course, down from 70% in June. The shift is even more glaring among Republican women and the party’s under-45 crowd.
Overall, about one-quarter of Americans say things in the country are headed in the right direction, down from about 4 in 10 in June. Democrats and independents didn’t shift meaningfully.
NYPD officers detain demonstrators Thursday during a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside the Jacob K. Javits federal building in New York.
Interviews with Republicans who took the poll suggest that political violence and nagging worries about social discord are playing a role in the notable shift in their mood after a summer scarred by killings of figures on both sides of the political spectrum, though they also mentioned another array of worries, including jobs, household costs and crime.
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“I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about the worsening political discourse and, now, the disturbing assassinations,” said Chris Bahr, a 42-year-old Republican from suburban Houston.
“If you’d have talked to me two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have brought it up as a main concern but more of a gnawing feeling,” the software administrator said. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about. But now it’s violence, while before it was just this sense of animosity and division.”
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters Thursday after departing the United Kingdom aboard Air Force One.
Unusually sharp drop
Views of the country’s direction tend to be fairly stable, but major events sometimes shake partisans’ feelings about the state of the country, even when their party is in power.
Democrats, for example, were more likely to say the U.S. was headed the wrong way after the Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that established a federal right to abortion. Democrat Joe Biden was president.
But the GOP shift in optimism, especially among younger Republicans and GOP women, is noteworthy for its scale. The drop in Republicans who see the country headed in the right direction is bigger than the decline between October 2020 and December 2020, after President Donald Trump, a Republican, lost his reelection bid. It’s more similar in scope to the decline that occurred in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Among Republicans younger than 45, the decline is particularly glaring: 61% say the country is headed in the wrong direction, a spike of 30 percentage points since June, the last time the question was asked.
Mostly, 42-year-old truck driver Mustafa Robinson, a Republican, is troubled by the cost of living, but he has been increasingly bothered by what he wishes was a stronger sense of national unity.
“It’s like, you think you’re heading in the right direction with your career and your job, but everything around you is going up in price. It seems like you can’t catch a break,” said Robinson, a married father of three who lives in Delaware County just southwest of Philadelphia. “But we are also supposed to be united as a country and coming together. And we are not. I’m so perplexed how we’re not on the same page about anything, so bad that these people are being shot.”
People hold a rally at Florida International University on Thursday to protest an agreement by college police to work together with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement on campus in Miami.
Political violence
Kirk, who started the Arizona-based political organization Turning Point USA and was a leader rallying young conservatives for Trump, died Sept. 10 after he was shot during an outdoor event at Utah Valley University.
On June 14, Democrat Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state House speaker, and her husband were shot to death in their in their suburban Minneapolis home in what authorities called an act of targeted political violence.
In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, his family and guests fled the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg after a man broke into the home and set a fire that caused significant damage. It happened during the Jewish holiday of Passover, and Shapiro is Jewish.
Last year, Trump was the target of an assassination attempt during an election campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was shot in the ear.
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Worries about political violence aren’t new for many Americans. Last October, an AP-NORC poll found that 42% of U.S. adults were “extremely” or “very” concerned about the possibility of increased political violence directed at political figures or election officials in the aftermath of the presidential election.
Trump blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s killing and discussed pursuing progressive groups in response. Without establishing any link to last week’s shooting, he and members of his administration discussed classifying some groups as domestic terrorists, ordering racketeering investigations and revoking tax-exempt status for some.
GOP women’s view of the nation’s course has shifted almost as much as younger Republicans’ view, according to the poll. About three-quarters of Republican women say the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 27% in June. By comparison, 56% of Republican men say the country is going the wrong way, up from 30% in June.
