A study asked Americans if they could support political violence. Half said they think a civil war is coming

The survey dug into some of the potential motivations for political violence — and many revolve around issues important in conservative circles.

When asked questions about specific objectives, nearly 12% of respondents said that violence could be at least sometimes justified “to return Donald Trump to the presidency this year” and 25% “to stop an election from being stolen.”

Meanwhile, 7% of respondents believed it could be at least sometimes justified to use violence “to stop people who do not share my beliefs from voting,” 24% said it could be OK “to preserve an American way of life based on Western European traditions,” 19% “to oppose the government when it does not share my beliefs,” and 38% “to oppose the government when it tries to take private land for public purposes.”

The findings are foreboding at time when American democracy is on edge, with a House committee holding explosive hearings on the Jan. 6 attack and the country reeling from more than 300 mass shootings this year, amid debates over the Supreme Court’s power and efforts to restrict voting rights.

The survey of 8,620 people aimed to learn more about what was motivating Americans at a time when researchers noted that both gun violence and gun purchases are increasing, more people believe QAnon-type conspiracy theories and political polarization is widening.

While researchers tempered the results by noting that a “large majority of respondents rejected political violence altogether,” they said that “these initial findings suggest a continuing alienation from and mistrust of American democratic society and its institutions, founded in part on false beliefs.”

The findings “suggest a high level of support for violence, including lethal violence, to achieve political objectives,” researchers wrote. “The prospect of large-scale political violence in the near future is entirely plausible.”

In one of the survey’s more startling findings, 40% of the respondents said that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy.”

That was among many results that shocked the lead researcher, Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine physician and the director of the California Center for Firearm Violence Prevention.

“I had pretty dark expectations about what we would find with this survey because of the homework I had done getting ready for it,” Wintemute said. “But the findings are darker than my worst-case scenario.”

Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and author of “A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security,” called the finding that many people value having a strong leader over a democracy “the most worrisome statistic” in the survey.

Kleinfeld said that while America has “most of the risk factors for significant widespread political violence,” the nation also has strong “resilience factors” like a powerful professional military and other institutions “that are hard to take down with violence.”

“Those are big resilience factors, but they can weakened and what we see in a statistic like that is very strong support for a weakening of our institutions,” Kleinfeld said. If that resilience is “weakened, we will likely see much more broad political violence,” she said.

Wintemute said the desire for a strong leader is a reflection that “there is a sense of insecurity and fear in the United States.”

When people feel insecure, many “look for strong leadership as in authoritative, as in authoritarian leadership,” Wintemute said. “Democracy and civil society experts have been concerned about this for quite some time. And I think what we’re seeing is that tentativeness of commitment to democracy in the United States is perhaps even greater than we thought.”

Another troubling sign could be found in the responses to why people would commit violence.

The survey found that 19% of the respondents strongly or very strongly agree with the statement that “if elected leaders will not protect American democracy, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires taking violent actions.” Meanwhile, 16% feel the same way about the statement, “Our American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”

What still needs to be mined from the responses is what exactly “our American way of life” is — and who is saying that. Wintemute said many of those types of questions will be answered as the data in the study is further analyzed in the coming months.

The survey asked specifically about certain types of potential targets people would be willing to attack.

Nearly 9% of respondents were at least somewhat willing to personally commit violence against “an elected federal or state government official,” 8% against “an elected local government official,” 6% against “an election worker, such as a poll worker or vote counter,” 6% against “a public health official,” 9% against “a member of the military or National Guard,” 9% against “a police officer,” 6% against “a person who does not share your race or ethnicity,” 5% against “a person who does not share your religion” and 7% against “a person who does not share your political beliefs.”

The study found that 4% agreed that “I will shoot someone with a gun” if they find themselves in a situation where they feel justified to use political violence to achieve a particular aim.

More than one-third (36%) said violence was at least sometimes justified “to prevent discrimination based on race or ethnicity.”

Half the respondents agreed at least somewhat that “in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.”

Kleinfeld softened the response to imminent civil war by noting that countries that have strong democracies and strong institutions don’t break out into separatist armed conflict “simply because people dislike each other.”

“But they have insurgencies, and they have people who try to use violence to take over the state. And I think we are very close to that category of people using threats and violence to take over state governments,” said Kleinfeld.

In addition to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Kleinfeld said that “we’re seeing much more of this at the state and local level,” like the foiled 2020 attempt by right-wing, anti-government extremists to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and various attacks on school board officials, election officials and poll workers.

“We’re likely to see more violence, some of which will look political, and some of which will look like mass shootings and some of which will look like everyday homicide,” Kleinfeld said. “But it’s all going to increase.”

The survey found wide chasms on race that could fuel more political violence.

It found significant support for “replacement theory,” a racist belief that drove the gunman who killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store in May. Nearly one in five respondents (19%) disagreed with the statement that “having more Black Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans is good for the country” and 41% agreed — including 16% who agreed strongly or very strongly — with the idea that “in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.”

While 39% of the respondents agreed strongly that “white people benefit from advantages in society that Black people do not have,” 27% agreed strongly that “discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities.”

There was a strong contingent of respondents who believe in fringe, discredited QAnon-type conspiracy theories.

More than 1 in 5 respondents (23%) backed the statement that U.S. institutions are “controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles” who traffic children for sex — a staple of QAnon beliefs. Nearly 1 in 3 agreed that “a storm coming soon” will “sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” another QAnon belief. Nearly a third of respondents (32%) endorsed the false statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.”

Kleinfeld pointed out that the history of political violence in America is long, from the nativist 19th century Know Nothing Party to the Klu Klux Klan to the Weather Underground and other fringe groups of the late 1960s and 1970s.

“What’s happening now is that the violence is more frequent on the right, and it’s mainstream. So these are not fringe groups. They’re not small cells that are generally disavowed by the mainstream,” Kleinfeld said. “They’re being increasingly supported by mainstream political actors and commentators.”

The bright spot at this moment is that there is still time to turn these feelings around.

“We are not in a lot of political violence right now. It’s heightened. But we are nothing like Kenya in 2007 or even America in 1968,” Kleinfeld said. “We can turn back, but we need to recognize just how bad things are getting and we have to start acting.”

The adult respondents completed the online survey between May 13 to June 2. Wintemute said more will be learned and shared over the next few months as researchers dive deeper into the information.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli