Is there more political violence? Here’s what the limited research shows

The assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and the attempted murder of another are somber data points in what appears to be an era of increasing political violence, a review of available data and expert research shows.

Though political violence researchers do not argue that recent shootings of Minnesota lawmakers suggest we can expect a spike in violence to come, their data does show a pronounced shift in how often government officials – elected and appointed, local, state and federal, Democrat and Republican – are increasingly subject to threats, harassment and violence.

There were 1,766 threats and incidents of harassment made toward local officials nationwide from January 2022 through April 2025, the latest month for which BDI data is available. In order to get a better understanding of what that disaggregated data meant, MinnPost has combined all threats into a monthly count and then plotted them over the 39 months of data. 

Local threats grow, state-level picture less clear

A linear regression shows that, although there have been low-count and high-count months throughout that period, the number of local officials in the U.S. being subjected to threats and harassment has, on average, increased since Princeton researchers began collecting data. The data shows a meaningful trend over time that is unlikely to have happened by accident.

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While there is no similarly accessible database of threats for state lawmakers and other officials, either in Minnesota or nationwide, some organizations use other research methods such as surveys or interviews to understand the dangers to those at state capitols and agencies.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law conducts this kind of research and most recently produced a report highlighting state lawmakers’ safety concerns.

Of the 350 lawmakers surveyed, 38% saw more frequent abuse since taking office, while an equal number said the abuse was the same; only 16% said it had decreased in their time in state office.

“This is an equal opportunity problem,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel and manager for elections and government at the Brennan Center, while acknowledging that there are differences among groups. “Republicans are more likely to say frequency is increasing, while women are more likely to say seriousness is increasing.”

“Forty-three percent of state legislators have been harassed,” Vanderwalker said. “Four percent of state legislators have been attacked, 1% of local officeholders have been attacked.”

Dr. Roudabeh Kishi of Bridging Divides at Princeton echoed Vandewalker’s broad security concerns from lawmakers.

“The numbers are just really high, regardless of political party,” she said. “So this event [in Minnesota], along with other events, like the attempted assassinations of President Trump, even going back to the attack on Steve Scalise and other members of Congress when they were practicing for a baseball game some years ago, shows that it really is, unfortunately, a problem that both Republicans and Democrats are experiencing.”

If it’s a bipartisan problem, why isn’t more done?

MinnPost’s Matt Blake recently wrote about how Minnesota lawmakers and officials are grasping for ways to boost security without appearing to be panicked, with some choosing to leave their homes and stay with family while the state scrubbed websites of their addresses.

What is happening in Minnesota illustrates the tradeoffs and resource limitations that make keeping state and local officials safe so difficult.

“Tough criticism is different from threats,” Vandewalker said. “Threats and harassment have an impact on people’s ability to hold public events, to work on controversial issues, even if they’re important to their constituents.”

The Brennan Center is an advocate for cybersecurity, and its reports recommend steps such as address confidentiality for public figures. Although Minnesota is currently taking personal addresses down from government websites, it may be obligated to furnish such addresses as part of a public records request in the future.

Beyond greater digital privacy, recommendations for increased security vary greatly based on the state and local government in question. In fact, both the Brennan Center and Princeton’s Bridging Divides said it was difficult to provide one-size-fits-all security recommendations. Because every state and local government body is different, it’s also difficult for officials to determine how they should reach out if they are the victim of harassment or violence or fear they may become one.

“It really varies greatly which agency is responsible [for government personnel security], or if there is an identifiable agency for state lawmakers, and if there is one at the local level,” Vandewalker said.

Kishi, of Bridging Divides, added: “One of our biggest findings is inconsistency from state to state and from county to county. One of our recommendations is for states to have definitions of what constitutes a threat, what constitutes harassment. Use those definitions consistently, so that the risks to all lawmakers are being assessed and monitored consistently and evenly. That way, resources can be allocated to where they’re needed.”

An equally difficult, although very different, sort of problem is determining why public officials are seeing more harassment and even violence.

“We interviewed about three dozen state legislators, one-on-one, to get some of the less numerical and more human elements of it. And it was really common for folks to tell us that they felt like the general extremism and divisiveness in our politics and in our society now was a big part of the problem that was driving this kind of behavior,” Kishi said.

“There’s going to be many, many factors and causes” of political violence, she added. “But we need public leaders to consistently call out and condemn this kind of behavior every time it happens, and emphasize that this is not the way we resolve our policy differences in the United States.”

Editor’s note: This story was written by Shadi Bushra, MinnPost’s data journalist.

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

MinnPost is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization whose mission is to provide high-quality journalism for people who care about Minnesota.