Voters Agree That the Government Should Do More to Combat Hate Crimes
By Evangel Penumaka
Note: this piece is part of a series on anti-Asian racism and hate crimes, focusing on national voter attitudes on what the government should do to combat anti-Asian hate crimes. The other two installments in this series are about national voter attitudes concerning anti-Asian racism, and how voters in California feel about anti-Asian racism and hate crimes.
Introduction
After assessing voter attitudes towards the spate of anti-Asian hate crimes that have devastated Asian American communities, we next examined voters’ opinions on the political implications and ramifications of these attacks. First, we tested how voters perceive the role of the federal government in preventing racially motivated hate crimes, particularly in light of the ongoing and increased hate crimes and violence against Asian Americans. We also tested if voters viewed racially motivated extremists or protest groups like Antifa to be the greatest domestic terrorist threat to the U.S.
We find a majority of likely voters believe the federal government should be doing more to combat racially motivated hate crimes, with highest agreement among Democrats and among voters of color. We find less consensus on whether racially motivated extremists or protest groups like Antifa pose the highest domestic terrorist threat to the U.S. While views on this issue are driven by partisanship — where a majority of Democrats believe racially motivated extremists pose the highest domestic terrorist threat, and Republicans are more likely to label protest groups as a larger problem — we find relatively low variation across racial lines over which of the two pose the highest threat. This analysis presents a brief overview of voters’ perceptions on this issue, with the aim of future analysis and further refined survey questions, such as voters’ associations with the word “extremist.”
Federal Action On Hate Crimes
We first asked likely voters if the federal government should be doing more, is doing enough, or does not need to do anything to combat racially motivated hate crimes and violence. Nationally, we find that a majority of likely voters (52 percent) think the government should be doing more. When looking by race, Asian, Black and Latina/o likely voters are more enthusiastically in agreement that the government should be doing more, with support levels of 63 percent, 69 percent, and 60 percent, respectively. We find more variation among white voters: a plurality (48 percent) of white likely voters believe the government should be doing more, while almost a third (29 percent) believe the government is doing enough.
Domestic Terrorist Threats In The U.S.
We next examined likely voter views on domestic terrorist threats in the U.S. Here, respondents were shown the following two responses:
Racially motivated extremists pose the highest domestic terrorist threat to the U.S.
Protest groups like Antifa pose the highest domestic terrorist threat to the U.S.
Nationally, we find a low level of consensus on this topic. A plurality of likely voters by a 6-point margin think that racially motivated extremists pose the highest domestic terrorist threat to the U.S. By race, a majority of Black voters think racially motivated extremists pose the highest threat by a 42-point margin. We find slimmer pluralities of agreement among Latinos and Asians by a margin of 17-points and 9-points, respectively, while white voters are split on the issue. Non-college educated voters are also split on this issue, believing that racially motivated extremists pose the highest domestic terrorist threat by a 4-point margin. We see a slight increase among college-educated voters that racially motivated extremists pose the highest threat in contrast to groups like Antifa by an 8-point margin.
Conclusion
In this second part of our broader analysis on racially motivated hate crimes we find national agreement that the federal government should be doing more to combat these types of crimes, with heightened agreement among voters of color. Voters however show less agreement on whether racially motivated extremists pose a domestic terrorist threat to the U.S. when compared to protest groups like Antifa.
Notably, Black likely voters are more likely to believe racially motivated extremists pose the largest threat while in comparison, Asians, Latinos and Whites show less consensus on this issue. This is likely driven both by voter associations with media portrayals of protest groups — specifically of the racial justice protests which took place last summer — and varying understandings of the word “extremist.” Less people may associate verbal harassment, for example, as a racially extremist action in contrast to more violent actions. This itself poses a challenge to reporting on the various types of hate crimes that the AAPI community has faced from the start of the pandemic.
While we are currently seeing historic shifts through Congress passing the NO HATE Act and President Biden acknowledging white supremacy as a terrorist threat in his national address, there is a pressing need for continued action to bring much needed visibility to the racialized experiences of Asian Americans — and other racial and ethnic groups more broadly — in the U.S.
Methodology
From March 26 to March 29, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1400 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.