US Political Violence Surges to Record, Bloomberg Analysis Shows

Political violence in a polarized US is surging, with the past five years of assassinations and attempts on the lives of politicians the highest on records dating back to the 1960s, a Bloomberg Geo-Economic analysis shows.

Since the start of 2021, there have been five assassinations or attempted assassinations of politicians, including two on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2024, according to the Violence Project — a research center at Hamline University. The analysis follows the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close Trump ally, during a campus event in Utah.

Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations of US Politicians

“Political violence is the antithesis of a healthy democracy,” analysts Jennifer Welch and Martin Quick wrote in a research note. “Its causes belie easy explanations, and its perpetrators and victims cross ideological lines.”

The one factor that seems to be contributing to its recent rise is “intensifying political polarization,” they said.

Indeed, the ideological distance between Democratic and Republican lawmakers has increased in both the House of Representatives and Senate since the end of World War II, according to data compiled by Voteview — an institute at UCLA that uses roll call data to estimate the ideology of every member of Congress.

“Polarization often goes hand-in-hand with political violence,” Quick and Welch said. “The risk looking forward is violence may beget more violence.”