Kirk Assassination Fallout Scrambles Americans’ Views on Free Speech and Cancel Culture

Debates over free speech and censorship from recent years largely redounded to the benefit of U.S. conservatives, who found themselves on the right side of the issue. But the fallout from the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk suggests that’s no longer the case.

With President Donald Trump and his allies now pushing their own version of “cancel culture” against opponents of Kirk and his political movement, new Morning Consult research shows fears about censorship are on the rise among Americans. And while Republicans have grown more fond of speech restrictions, Democrats have moved the other way, underlining the challenges for policymakers and major brands alike in navigating this high-stakes moment.

Our latest survey, conducted Sept. 19-21, shows that 51% of voters view censorship as a “major threat” to free speech in the United States, up from 42% back in 2023.

Compared to the survey conducted during Joe Biden’s presidency, the share of Democratic voters who see censorship as a major threat to free speech has more than doubled (from 28% to 66%), while the share of Republicans who share that belief dropped by double digits (from 54% to 36). 

Over that same time period, Republican voters have become three times more likely to say that censorship efforts are not a threat to free speech (9% to 27%) as Democrats’ fears about the matter have grown. 

The Trump administration’s threats to target speech they label as violent or businesses they view as critical of conservatives also appears to be breaking through to Americans, who are significantly more likely to view the GOP as a threat to free speech than the Democratic Party.

Just a quarter of voters (27%) said the Democratic Party is a bigger threat to free speech, compared with 44% who blamed the Republican Party. The responses yield a big partisan gap, of course, however Republican voters are roughly twice as likely as Democrats to view their own party as the biggest threat (21% to 11%).

These dynamics contribute to something that may have seemed unthinkable during the reckoning over cancel culture that emerged during Trump’s first term, when the Democratic Party’s coalition was perpetuating cancel culture over a range of social issues that conservatives’ derided as being overly “woke.”

Republicans are now more likely than Democrats to say they support cancel culture (32% to 24%), which the survey described as the modern phenomenon of publicly shaming or boycotting individuals or entities after they have done or said something that others find offensive. It’s a big shift from when we asked a similar question in 2020 and found 46% of Democrats and just 18% of Republicans in approval.

That dynamic played out in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, when some conservative activists successfully sought to bring professional consequences to people who made light of the event in often vulgar or, at a minimum, callous social media posts. 

Asked broadly, more voters than not (47%) say there should not be consequences for people who publicly express opinions that are deeply offensive to others, compared with 36% who said there should be.

Republican voters are nearly twice as likely as Democrats to indicate their support for consequences for those that say deeply offensive things (49% to 27%), while Democrats are the bigger champions of consequence-free speech (58% to 37%). This, again, represents a stark change from responses to a similarly worded question five years ago, when 68% of Democrats favored consequences for offensive speech and only 37% of Republicans agreed.

More specifically, the bulk of the electorate is OK with employers firing employees who publicly encourage violence (75%), make racist remarks (65%), espouse sexism (62%) or celebrate death (50%), with wide gaps between Democrats and Republicans.

Only when it comes to making anti-LGBTQ+ remarks are Democrats more likely than Republicans to support an employee’s speech-related firing, and the divide is relatively small (49% to 44%). In fact, the biggest partisan divide that emerged on the question came on the matter of celebrating death, with just 37% of Democrats calling it a fireable offense compared with 66% of Republicans.

Those online celebrations of death that drew conservative backlash have led some Republicans to call for social media platforms to rein in such speech or ban those who engaged in it, amid a larger content moderation discussion previously championed by Democrats.

Compared with our survey conducted in 2023 during one of those debates, Americans have grown a bit less certain about their views on social media content moderation policy, though views among Democrats and Republicans have moved similarly to their views on speech more broadly.

Just 1 in 3 Democrats said social media platforms should have stricter content moderation policies, down from 54% who said the same back in 2023. On the other side of the coin, the share of Republicans in favor of stronger content restrictions has grown from 28% to 43%.

This comes as Americans have balanced out their views on which side has the leg-up on social media companies’ bias against content based on political beliefs following the tech industry’s cozying up to the Trump administration.

Voters are almost evenly divided over which side faces more bias from platforms, with 24% saying social media companies are biased against those with conservative beliefs and 21% saying they’re biased against those with liberal beliefs.

That marks a big shift from 2019, when voters were 24 points more likely to see these companies as biased against the right, driven by a growth in concerns among Democrats and a softening among Republicans that the most prominent big tech brands are tipping the scales against them.

The bottom line

While Republican voters are starting to coalesce around more restrictions on political speech, Democrats are moving the other way. This puts businesses in a tough spot for now, given the GOP’s governing trifecta in Washington, given the potential for backlash from Democrats who are fearful of what they see as Trump’s authoritarian-style pressure on dissenters — both corporate and individual.

While the matter of employment practices gives businesses an out in the near-term, the issue of online speech appears to be on a thornier path, especially given how much voters blame the platforms for creating the environment that led to Kirk’s assassination.

The public’s concerns about restrictions on speech more broadly could be useful for those looking to galvanize opposition to fight back against restrictions on speech. However, the potential for retribution from the Trump administration remains the bigger threat in the current political climate.