In the 2010 movie “Machete,” Sen. John McLaughlin of Texas (played by Robert De Niro) stages an assassination attempt to frame the title character. A newscaster in the film reports that a poll, taken within minutes of the fake shooting, shows McLaughlin at record-high approval ratings.
It’s part of a popular belief that when high-profile political figures survive assassination attempts, their approval ratings skyrocket.
So will Donald Trump — having survived an assassination attempt Saturday when a gunman wounded his ear — suddenly run away with the 2024 presidential election as some fretting Democrats and exuberant Republicans now believe?
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To test this argument, I analyzed Gallup approval rating data involving modern-era presidents who survived assassination attempts.
Here are the results:
Since John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, there have been at least six high-profile attempts upon the lives of presidents, with three against Republicans (Gerald Ford twice and Ronald Reagan once) and three against Democrats (Bill Clinton twice and Joe Biden once).
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to assassinate Ford on September 5, 1975, in Sacramento.
Gallup Polling from August 15-18, 1975, showed Ford with 46 percent support. That support declined to 45 percent by September 9-12, 1975.
Then, on Sept. 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore tried to kill Ford in San Francisco. Ford’s approval rating from Sept. 12-15, 1975, was 45 percent, which went up to only 47 percent on Oct. 3-6, 1975 — a two-percentage-point gain.
John Hinckey Jr. sits in the middle of the bench seat of a station wagon on March 30, 1980, surrounded by FBI agents. He departs the United States District for the District of Columbia after being charged with the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981. From March 13-16, 1981, before the shooting, the president’s support was at 60 percent. It increased to 67 percent on April 3-6, 1981, a seven-percentage-point gain in Gallup polls.
On Sept. 12, 1994, Frank Eugene Corder hijacked a small plane and attempted to crash it into the White House where Clinton, the then-president, resided. The plane instead landed on the South Lawn. Before then, Clinton had an approval rating of 39 percent. It increased in the next Gallup Polling average to 42 percent during Sept. 16-18, 1994.
Francisco Martin Duran, another would-be assassin who targeted Clinton on Oct. 29, 1994, shooting with an assault rifle at the White House while the president was inside. Before then, Clinton’s approval rating, according to Gallup, was 48 percent (Oct. 22-25, 1994) and it fell to 46 percent afterward (Nov. 2-6, 1994).
On May 23, 2023, a neo-Nazi tried to kill President Joe Biden by crashing through a barrier a block from the White House. The May 1-24, 2023, Gallup polling average for Biden was 39 percent. For the following month, it was 43 percent (June 1-23, 2023), according to Gallup polling.
Bottom line?
If you add the Gallup poll improvements and poll declining cases and divide the sum by the number of cases, you get an average increase of 2.17 percentage points — barely a statistical blip by presidential approval rating standards.
Movies aside, myths about assassination attempts boosting presidential poll numbers typically come from tales about Reagan.
Peter Sheridan in the United Kingdom’s The Express argues “President Reagan’s popularity soared by 22 per cent [sic] when he was shot by a would-be assassin 43 years ago, and political and financial experts expect Trump to savour a similar boost.”
But as the Gallup evidence showed, it was only a seven-percentage-point jump, and the percent boost is still not near 22 percent (only a little above 10 percent).
Moreover, Del Quentin Wilber, writing for the Associated Press, claims in a book of his book that the assassination attempt “changed the trajectory of his presidency” for the positive. He also cites David Broder, who claims that Reagan’s survival of the assassination attempt and his folksy humor, made him a “mythical figure.”
It is worth noting that by the start of the summer, Reagan was back down to 59 percent. By November, he was at 49 percent. By the end of 1982 and early 1983, his approval rating was 39 percent. All of these are verified by Gallup polling.
Reagan’s political fortunes would soon turn around — but not because of an assassination attempt. Instead, a strong economy, competent re-election campaign and middling Democratic opposition in Walter Mondale conspired to propel Reagan to a landslide victory in 1984.
Assassination attempts typically only make very small boosts in approval ratings.
Speakers at the Republican National Convention this week in Milwaukee can’t stop talking about how strong and brave Trump is — the former president appeared at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum on Monday night — for bouncing back so quickly.
But if Trump becomes president of the United States again, and defeats Biden, it’ll likely be caused by any of several factors unrelated to the assassination attempt.
And an initial poll from Morning Consult supports that notion: Trump did not receive a nationwide popularity boost following the assassination attempt, according to the survey.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.
