49% Say ‘Antifa’ Is A Terrorist Organization

Voters are more critical of the police response to the latest outburst of black protest nationwide but also tend to agree with President Trump that the so-called “antifa” movement thought to be behind much of the violence should be labeled as terrorists.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters think the “antifa" movement should be designated a terrorist organization. Thirty percent (30%) disagree, while 22% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty percent (40%) believe the mob violence that has erupted in several cities during protests over the police killing of an unarmed man in Minneapolis is legitimate outrage over what happened.  Forty-nine percent (49%) disagree and say it’s mostly criminals taking advantage of the situation. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure. Voters see more legitimacy in the latest protests than they did in similar ones in Baltimore in 2015 and St. Louis in 2017. 

Thirty-one percent (31%) of voters now think most police departments are too aggressive in dealing with violent protesters, while 28% believe they are not aggressive enough. Just 30% think the response is about right. Eleven percent (11%) again are undecided.

This is a more critical view of the police than voters had two years ago when only 16% said they were too aggressive versus 30% who felt they were not aggressive enough. Forty-seven percent (47%) rated their response as about right.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 1-2, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Following the beating of a gay journalist by “antifa” activists in Portland, Oregon last summer, just 22% of voters expressed a favorable opinion of the radical group. Only 30% felt “antifa” was a valid protest movement representing the concerns of many Americans.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of black voters feel the mob violence in the latest protests is primarily legitimate outrage, while 53% of whites see it as mostly criminal. Other minority voters are evenly divided. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to think that most police departments are too aggressive in dealing with violent protesters.

Republicans (72%) are far more supportive of designating the “antifa" movement a terrorist organization than Democrats (32%) and voters not affiliated with either major party (43%) are.

But then 69% of Republicans and a plurality (47%) of unaffiliated voters view the mob violence in the latest protests as mostly criminals taking advantage of the situation. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Democrats consider the violence legitimate outrage for the most part. Democrats (51%) are also much more likely than GOP voters (14%) and unaffiliateds (26%) to view the police response as too aggressive.

Only 26% of voters who see the mob violence in the latest protests as legitimate outrage regard “antifa” as a terrorist organization. This compares to 72% of those who see the violence as mostly criminal.

Just 10% of all Americans think most police officers are racist. Most also have said in surveys for the past several years that the majority of deaths that involve the police are the fault of the suspect. Rasmussen Reports will update these findings tomorrow.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters continue to believe that most politicians raise racial issues just to get elected, not to solve real problems.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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