A new YouGov survey on protesting finds that many Americans describe the protests they’ve seen recently as peaceful, angry, serious, and chaotic. While most Americans think protest attendees are ordinary people, about one-quarter of Americans believe most of the people participating in protests are professional political activists.
29% of Americans — including 41% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans — have attended a protest. 12% of Americans have attended a protest within the past year. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have attended a protest in the past year (21% vs. 6%).
Within the past year, 9% of Americans have attended a No Kings protest. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have attended a No Kings protest in the last year (16% vs. 4%). Previous YouGov polling found that 45% of Americans approved of the No Kings protests held on June 14 and 41% disapproved; 49% approved of the No Kings protests on October 18 and 33% disapproved.
When asked how they would describe what they’ve seen of recent protests — from a list of 11 adjectives — 43% of Americans say protests have generally seemed peaceful. 41% say protests have seemed angry, 36% say they’ve seemed serious, and 32% say they’ve seemed chaotic.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say recent protests have seemed peaceful (71% vs. 18%), energetic (51% vs. 12%), and hopeful (45% vs. 10%). Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say recent protests have been chaotic (54% vs. 9%), violent (50% vs. 6%), and angry (64% vs. 20%). (The question didn't specify protests or their political lean.)
Men are more likely than women to say that, from what they’ve seen, recent protests have seemed angry (46% vs. 37%), chaotic (38% vs. 27%), and fearful (17% vs. 10%).
59% of Americans say the most effective protests are generally peaceful. 38% say they’re generally serious and 37% say they’re generally hopeful. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the most effective protests are energetic (47% vs. 22%) and hopeful (45% vs. 30%).
Among people who have attended protests in the past year, 81% say the ones they’ve attended have seemed peaceful. Majorities say the protests they’ve attended have been hopeful (64%) and energetic (58%). Only 6% say the protests they’ve attended have been chaotic and only 4% say they have been violent.
60% of Americans who have attended protests in the last year say they’ve personally felt hopeful when attending them. 55% say they’ve felt peaceful at protests, 46% say they’ve felt energetic, and 45% say they’ve felt serious.
The majority of Americans think that most attendees of recent protests are ordinary people (57%). Fewer (26%) think that they are mostly professional political activists. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say most people who have attended recent protests are professional political activists (52% vs. 6%).
20% of Americans — including 43% of Republicans and 5% of Democrats — think that people participating in political protests in the U.S. often are being paid to do so. 22% think they sometimes are being paid, 24% think they rarely are being paid, and 19% think this never happens.
34% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans say people participating in political protests in the U.S. are never being paid to do so.
Only 1% of Americans say they have been paid to participate in a political protest in the U.S. 5% say they haven’t been paid, but someone they know has been, and 87% say neither they nor anyone they know has been.
Related:
- Which forms of protests are Americans most and least likely to find acceptable?
- More Americans think the U.S. is in a constitutional crisis than think the U.S. is a democracy
- What Americans think about recent pro-Palestinian campus protests
See the results for this YouGov survey
— Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth contributed to this article
Methodology: This article includes results from an online survey conducted on October 24 - 28, 2025 among 1,086 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of adult U.S. citizens. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4 percentage points.
Image: Getty
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