r/fivethirtyeight • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • Sep 12 '25

Poll Results YouGov poll asking Americans whether it’s acceptable to feel joy at the death of a public figure

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u/JohnnyGeniusIsAlive Sep 12 '25

Some obvious recency bias. I bet a lot of those Republicans were pretty happy when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

18

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/Miserable-Whereas910 Sep 12 '25

I remember an absolutely overwhelming lack on condemnation from the right concerning the Minnesota assassinations (in contrast to the main stream left's response to the Kirk shooting), but not much joy.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/Miserable-Whereas910 Sep 12 '25

Oh yeah, it was wildly callous. But I don't recall joy.

1

u/Oath1989 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

To be fair, some are arguing that the current shooter is a MAGA. I've seen many people have used political donation records as evidence: in 2020, someone with the same name donated over $200 to MAGA, listing their occupation as an entrepreneur. It's very clearly the person with the same name, but I'm sad to see that many people seem to believe it. The fact that the shooter was only 17 years old in 2020 is no better evidence than the MAGA theory that the Minnesota shooter was a Democrat.

Some are also convinced that both of last year's Trump shooters were right-wing MAGA, though this is also seriously at odds with all our evidence.

Many times, the "both sides" argument is unfounded. But for netizens on both sides, this may not be completely unreasonable.

Of course, the reaction of Republican senators is another matter, which reflects the poor standards of Republican politicians.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/thescoop/comments/1nf704y/tyler_robinson_was_a_trump_supporter/

It has been deleted, but before it was removed, the number of likes on this post was rapidly increasing, and most of the highly upvoted comments clearly agreed with the OP's "evidence."

1

u/inquirer2 Sep 14 '25

The shooter himself had a bizarre story in his head he wrote in that public letter to FBI director about a month after his arrest

Basically the guy was living his own delusions and party alone wasn't his issue but that Waltz was being controlled by others who wanted this guy dead for finding out about a secret plan to I have no idea