Fact check: Which states have the highest rates of politically motivated violence against politicians?

1. What claimants said: a short inventory of the key assertions that matter

The materials assert three core claims: first, there has been a notable increase in threats and targeted violence against politicians in 2024–2025, illustrated by incidents such as the Minnesota legislative shootings ^[1]. Second, analytic reports flag a rise in left-wing terrorist plots and attacks in 2025, with some datasets showing far-left activity outnumbering far-right incidents in certain windows ^{[2] [3]}. Third, other researchers and commentators stress that data are sparse, classifications are subjective, and small numbers can skew conclusions, cautioning against overreach in interpreting trends ^[3].

2. What the evidence shows on trends — convergence and conflict across studies

Multiple analyses and reporting converge on a broad upswing in political threats and violence since 2017, with recent spikes and high-profile attacks in 2024–2025 reinforcing public concern ^{[4] [5]}. However, there is clear disagreement about which ideological direction is dominant: one CSIS-linked report and similar studies document an increase in left-wing plots through mid-2025, while other work emphasizes persistent far-right threats and parity in targeting of Democrats and Republicans ^{[2] [3] [4]}. The net effect is a contested but unmistakable rise in violence overall.

3. Why assigning state-by-state rankings is not supported by the supplied data

None of the provided documents supply comprehensive, comparable state-level incident counts or normalized rates (incidents per population or per number of public officials) that would support robust interstate ranking. The Pew survey captures perceptions of increasing political violence but explicitly lacks state breakdowns, and analytic trend reports summarize national patterns without state-level granularity ^{[6] [7] [2]}. Without standardized coding, consistent timeframes, and population or official counts for normalization, any claim about “which states have the highest rates” would be speculative.

4. Methodological disputes that matter for geographic claims

Studies note subjective coding choices—what counts as terrorism versus criminal violence—and small sample sizes, both of which can drastically change apparent trends when broken down by state or region ^[3]. Some datasets count plots and threats alongside completed attacks; others exclude politically tinged crimes. These differences are especially consequential at state level because low absolute numbers mean a single incident can inflate a state’s apparent rate, undermining cross-state comparisons without careful methodology ^[3].

5. Who is being targeted: patterns across institutions and parties

Analyses of threats to members of Congress, prosecutions, and high-profile attacks show that both Democratic and Republican officials have been targeted, and that threats to legislators and local officials have increased since 2017 ^[4]. High-profile incidents cut across ideological lines, demonstrating that political violence in recent years is not exclusively the domain of a single partisan movement; rather, targeting patterns reflect a broader deterioration in norms and increased risk to public officials nationwide ^{[4] [5]}.

6. High-profile incidents provide context but not comprehensive geography

Coverage of specific attacks—such as the 2025 Minnesota shootings of state legislators and earlier national episodes like Gabby Giffords and the Scalise shooting—illustrates the severity and lethality of politically motivated violence, but they are snapshots that do not establish sustained state-level rates ^{[1] [5]}. These events explain public alarm and motivate research and policy responses, yet relying on episodic headlines to rank states conflates symbolic prominence with statistical prevalence ^{[1] [5]}.

7. What the supplied sources recommend and what’s missing for a state comparison

Researchers call for better, consistently coded incident databases and transparent methodology to discern trends by ideology, target type, and geography; the current corpus emphasizes national patterns and methodological caveats rather than state rankings ^{[3] [7]}. To produce defensible state-by-state rates would require compiling DOJ prosecutions, local law-enforcement incident logs, and academic threat datasets with uniform coding—data elements not contained in the supplied set ^{[4] [6]}.

8. Bottom line and practical next steps for someone seeking state rankings

The supplied evidence establishes a clear national increase in politically motivated threats and attacks and highlights contested findings about ideological sources, but it does not permit reliable identification of which states have the highest rates ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}. Anyone seeking state rankings should obtain and harmonize standardized incident-level data from federal prosecution records, academic threat databases, and state law-enforcement reports, then normalize by population and number of officials; without that work, interstate comparisons remain methodologically unsound ^{[6] [7]}.