Majority of Republicans Do Not Believe Bloody Jan. 6 Riot Was Very Violent: Poll
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On January 6, 2021, pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., in a display that gripped the nation, leaving five dead and more than a hundred wounded. Yet one year later, a large portion of Americans, particularly Republicans, do not recall the attack as very violent.
Americans watched the violence unfold in real-time: it was aired on cable news networks and streamed on social media. Gruesome footage of police being beaten with their own weapons, maced, and crushed in doorways circulated not only nationally, but globally.
However, one year later, partisan division in the perception of the events of January 6 remains high.
According to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 39% of Republicans recall the attack as extremely or very violent, starkly contrasted with the 87% of Democrats.
The poll also found that 32% of Republicans recall the event as somewhat violent, whereas 29% continue to believe it was not violent at all.
Meanwhile, only 11% of Democrats recall the event as somewhat violent and only 1% argue that it was not a violent attack.
These findings demonstrate the remnants of political polarization stemming from the 2020 presidential election, and the success of the effort by Trump supporters to downplay the violence and the impact of the riot.
In the same poll, however, a majority of Americans — 57% — place blame for January 6 on former President Donald Trump, up from 50% shortly after the attack.
Republicans also reflected this increase, while still not nearly as many place blame on the former president. 22% of Republicans now blame Trump, which has increased 11% since shortly after the attack. The polarization is evident, however, as 60% of Republicans still claim that Trump had little to no responsibility.
The poll conducted by AP-NORC, also assessed the perception of the House select committee, where they found that about 7 in every 10 Americans approves of the committee and its investigation.
Yet, 58% of Republicans agree with this majority, arguing that this investigation should not be continued for a multitude of reasoning. Another factor of the aftermath of the riots of January 6th that is continuing to polarize the nation across party divisions.
“The AP-NORC poll of 1,089 adults was conducted Dec. 2-7 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.”
