PEW: Fewer Americans blame Trump for Jan. 6 riot now than last year

A new poll has found that fewer American adults, both Republicans and Democrats believe Donald Trump bears a lot of responsibility for the Jan. 6 riots compared to a year ago.

According to the Pew Research Center, about half of U.S. adults (52%) polled last January said Donald Trump bore a “lot” of responsibility for his supporters breaking into the U.S. Capitol building to protest the 2020 election results, compared to “some” or “none” of the responsibility. Their most recent poll found that number has fallen to 43%.

The decline is consistent across both political parties. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said Trump bore a lot of responsibility fell eight points over the last year, from 18% to 10% while Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents who said he bore a lot of responsibility fell 11 points over the last year from 81% to 70%. However, the number who said the former President bore some responsibility remained steady, a little over 30% for Republicans and around 15% for Democrats.

The share of Americans who have heard “a lot” about the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack tasked to investigate the riots has grown over the past year from 11% to 26%, but remains a minority of the population. The proportion in each party are comparable – 29% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans  

But a partisan divide can again be seen in opinions of the level of attention the media has paid to the Jan. 6 incident. About a third of the overall population believe “too much,” “the right amount,” and “too little” attention has been paid to Jan. 6 (35%, 33%, and 31%, respectively). But 65% of Republicans believe too much attention has been paid to Jan. 6, while 48% of Democrats believe too little attention has been paid.

The 2022 survey was conducted Jan. 10-17 among 5,128 U.S. adults.