More than three-quarters of surveyed, registered voters said the U.S. is in a political crisis following the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, according to a new survey released Wednesday.
The new Quinnipiac University national poll found that 79 percent of surveyed voters believe the country is in a political crisis, while 18 percent of respondents do not.
The view is shared by the majority of voters across the political spectrum, with 93 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans agreeing.
“The Kirk assassination lays bare raw, bipartisan concerns about where the country is headed,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.
The majority of surveyed voters, at 71 percent, said politically motivated violence in the U.S. today is a very serious issue. About 22 percent said it is a somewhat serious problem, 3 percent said it is a not so serious problem and 1 percent said it is not an issue at all.
The top figure represents a 17-point increase from the late June iteration of the poll, which found that 54 percent of voters said that politically motivated violence in the country was a very serious problem. More than a third of respondents, 37 percent, thought it was a somewhat serious problem; 6 percent said it was not a so serious problem; and 2 percent said it was not a problem at all, according to the June survey.
The majority of voters, 58 percent, reached in the more recent survey said it will not be possible to tamp down the temperature on speech and political rhetoric in the U.S. Just more than a third, 34 percent, said it is achievable.
More than half of surveyed voters, 54 percent, think that political violence in the country will get worse in the next few years. Just more than a quarter, 27 percent, said it will remain roughly the same, while 14 percent of respondents argued it will simmer down, the survey found.
The poll was conducted Sept. 18-21 among 1,276 self-identified registered voters. The margin of error was 3.3 percentage points.
