A recent survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reveals that a majority of Americans have doubts about the U.S. Secret Service’s ability to protect presidential candidates, especially in light of last month’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The incident has placed the law enforcement agency under scrutiny after the gunman managed to get within 150 yards of Trump at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to the poll, only around three out of ten Americans are extremely or very confident that the Secret Service can effectively safeguard presidential candidates from violent threats in the weeks leading up to November’s election. Furthermore, approximately seven in ten survey respondents believe that the Secret Service bears at least some responsibility for the assassination attempt, with a significant number of those attributing a high level of responsibility to the agency.
The survey results also shed light on how Americans perceive the root causes of the assassination attempt. A majority of U.S. adults identified political division as a primary contributor, while others pointed to either the Secret Service’s inadequate protection or the widespread availability of guns. Democrats were more likely to blame gun accessibility, whereas Republicans tended to focus on the role played by the Secret Service in preventing the assassination attempt.
The poll also highlighted concerns about local law enforcement in Pennsylvania, with nearly half of respondents expressing at least a moderate level of responsibility for the assassination attempt. However, only about two in ten Americans believed that local law enforcement bore a great deal of responsibility for the incident.
This survey was conducted following the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who faced intense scrutiny during a live-broadcast congressional hearing where she provided evasive answers to questions about the assassination attempt. Cheatle admitted that this near-successful attack represented the “most significant operational failure” in the agency’s history in decades.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research surveyed 1,143 adults from July 25-29, utilizing a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the entire U.S. population. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points for all respondents.