They say politics can be murder. Recent polling suggests a disturbing share of Democratic and left-of-center voters are becoming far too comfortable with the idea.

A new survey from Liberal Currents and the Center for Strategic Politics asked 683 Democratic voters how they would feel about five hypothetical ways President Donald Trump might leave office before his term ends.

Apparently protecting democracy now includes the occasional military junta.

The lawful options drew predictably lopsided reactions: 86% said they would feel positively if Trump were impeached and convicted, and 84% said the same about removal under the 25th Amendment.

Then the poll got darker.

Fifty-nine percent said they would react positively to a headline announcing that military leaders had removed Trump and assumed control of the government to “safeguard the Constitution.” Another 56% said they would react positively if Trump simply died in his sleep.

The only scenario in which negative reactions outnumbered positive ones was assassination. Even there, 31% said they would feel very or somewhat positive if Trump were killed while speaking at a rally; 26% were neutral, and 43% reacted negatively.

The survey measured emotional reaction, not willingness to carry out or personally endorse violence. Still, a positive reaction to an assassination or a military takeover is an ugly result for a party that presents itself as the guardian of democracy.

Apparently protecting democracy now includes the occasional military junta.

Those findings do not stand alone. In April 2025, the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers Social Perception Lab surveyed 1,264 U.S. adults and found that 55.2% of respondents who identified as left of center considered the murder of Trump at least somewhat justified. Nearly 50% said the same about Elon Musk. The researchers described an emerging “assassination culture” among segments of the political left.

Five months later, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. Prosecutors allege that the accused killer targeted Kirk because of his political and religious beliefs.

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Owen Anderson

The online reaction exposed something broader than one alleged killer’s motive. Social media filled with people celebrating Kirk’s death, mocking his widow, and arguing that he had deserved to die because of his politics.

A YouGov poll conducted after Kirk’s killing found that 16% of liberals said it was usually or always acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they opposed. Among the “very liberal,” the number rose to 24%.

Conservatives registered at just 4%.

Cheering a death is not the same thing as committing violence. But political violence becomes easier to rationalize when the target has first been reduced to someone whose death is funny, deserved, or morally cleansing.

I have watched that permission structure develop in my native Portland, Oregon

During the summer of 2020, rioters repeatedly attacked the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse with fireworks, incendiary devices, rocks, bottles, and other attempts to set fires. Federal prosecutors charged one man after an incendiary object exploded at the courthouse entrance.

The pattern did not disappear. Beginning in 2025, the Portland ICE facility became another center of unrest. Court records describe protesters throwing rocks and bricks at officers, damaging security equipment, trying to breach the building, and using an upended stop sign as a makeshift battering ram. One participant who struck a federal officer in the head with a rock was later sentenced to 30 months in federal prison.

RELATED: ‘Reign of terror’: One-third of Democrats give thumbs-up to Trump assassination

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

There is a difference between peaceful protest and political violence. Democrats should be able to draw it without hesitation.

It’s why then-Senator Kamala Harris took flak during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots when she urged followers to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund “to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” In the middle of widespread disorder, a future Democratic vice president used her platform to promote bail assistance for protesters rather than draw a sharper distinction between lawful protest and criminal violence.

Political violence thrives on permission — explicit or subtle. That permission can come from celebrating an assassination, describing violence as justified, excusing riots because the cause is righteous, or treating the rule of law as optional when the target is sufficiently hated.

Democrats have spent the better part of a decade warning that American democracy is endangered by Trump and the right. They cannot demand that the country take political violence seriously while refusing to confront the appetite for it inside their own coalition.

You cannot save democracy by cheering when your political opponents are removed from it.

That is, in fact, how democracies die.