Democratic voters were asked how they'd feel if they woke up to a headline reading, "President Donald Trump was assassinated while speaking at a rally." Twenty-three percent said they'd feel "very positive." Another eight percent said "somewhat positive." That's 31% of the party that spent four years lecturing us about "threats to democracy."
Twenty-five percent more said they'd feel neither positive nor negative. Neutral. About a sitting president being murdered at a rally.
The poll, conducted by the Center for Strategic Politics and commissioned by the progressive outlet Liberal Currents, surveyed 683 Democratic voters nationwide between September 3 and September 8-10, 2026. The methodology used SMS-to-web and online panels, weighted by age, ethnicity, and gender, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.75 percentage points. This wasn't a Twitter poll or a Reddit thread. This was a structured, weighted survey published September 21.
And assassination wasn't even the most popular option. When asked about a military coup removing Trump from office, 59% of Democrats reacted positively — 43% "very positive," 16% "somewhat positive." Only 28% had a negative reaction to the idea of the military overthrowing a democratically elected president. Impeachment and removal pulled 86% positive. The 25th Amendment got 84%. Even Trump dying of natural causes drew a 56% positive response.
The analysis, written by Chance Phillips at Liberal Currents, framed the findings under the headline "Reign of Terror" — which tells you how the people commissioning this poll view the current administration. They weren't horrified by the results. They were contextualizing them as understandable.
The survey didn't stop at removal fantasies. Seventy-seven percent of respondents supported criminally prosecuting Trump administration officials over ICE and CBP enforcement actions. Seventy-three percent wanted Stephen Miller prosecuted. Pete Hegseth pulled 69% support for criminal charges. These aren't policy disagreements. These are Democrats telling pollsters they want their political opponents imprisoned.
A separate YouGov survey showing that 24% of respondents identifying as "very liberal" agreed that feeling happiness about opposing political figures' deaths is acceptable. That's not an outlier buried in the crosstabs. That's a quarter of a political subgroup telling researchers, on the record, that celebrating political death is morally fine.
We've had two actual assassination attempts on Donald Trump. A gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and came within inches of killing him. Another was intercepted at his golf course. Those weren't hypotheticals on a survey. Those were bullets.
Thirty-one percent positive. Twenty-five percent indifferent. Forty-three percent said they'd feel negative — which means 57% of Democrats surveyed either approved or shrugged at the assassination of a sitting president.
The margin of error is 3.75 points. The moral gap is wider.