Does surviving an assassination attempt guarantee political victory?

Former United States president Donald Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt on Saturday, July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania. The now-Republican nominee was telling supporters at a rally that immigration poses an existential threat to the country's nationhood when the attack began. A bullet hit his right ear and he quickly dropped to the ground.

More shots rang out, fired from a rooftop some 135 metres away. In the crowd behind Trump, a local firefighter and father of two named Corey Comperatore died while shielding his family. Two other spectators were seriously injured.

With the immediacy that befits an eternally online, deeply interconnected society, horror instantly begat speculation about the shooter's motivation. Was this a lone wolf or a coordinated attack? Was the objective ideological? And toward what end? Some conspiracists pondered a "false flag" operation, deliberately engineered to help Trump. Others blamed nefarious opposition from "the Left."

While that investigation continues, the earliest picture that emerged of the perpetrator—who was shot dead by Secret Service snipers within seconds of opening fire—is shockingly familiar in a country where mass shootings are a too-common occurrence.

Corey Comperatore was killed, and Donald Trump nearly assassinated, by a 20-year-old white male whom former classmates described as a social outcast.

Foregone conclusion?

Another debate erupted just as instantaneously. Given America's deeply divided, highly politicised culture, the question unsurprisingly arose about what the attempt on Trump's life would mean for his chances in the 2024 presidential election.

According to witnesses, at least one Trump supporter said as much in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, crying out "Trump was just re-elected!"

When President Joe Biden cancelled campaign events and anti-Trump television ads in a show of unity, many of his supporters—while agreeing with the necessity of those actions—seemed to throw up their hands in defeat.

The assassination attempt was history in the making, and surely history rendered the judgement: It was all over. Surely Trump, already leading in several important polls, had locked up the election.

As a historian of American politics, I submit an answer: I don't know. And neither does anybody else. Although many insta-pundits used history to argue that surviving an assassination guarantees political victory, history in fact says no such thing. We simply do not know what, if any, effect the shooting will have on the presidential race.

Political violence

What history does teach us, sadly, is that Biden was wrong when he said there was "no place in America for this type of violence."

Perhaps he was speaking aspirationally, about what could or should be true. But as a matter of history, political violence is deeply embedded in American public life, and not just in the distant past.

In 2011, then-Representative Gabby Giffords (a Democrat from Arizona) survived a gunshot wound to the head in a mass outdoor shooting that killed six people. In 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise (a Republican from Louisiana) was shot and badly injured, along with several others, while practising for a Congressional baseball game.

The long and tragic history of political violence, including assassinations (attempted and completed) of presidents and presidential candidates, teaches us that it is impossible to predict what their consequences will be.

The Reagan effect

Those who insist that Trump will see a rise in public approval often invoke the example of former President Ronald Reagan. In March 1981, just over two months after becoming president, Reagan was hit in the chest by a would-be assassin's bullet that had ricocheted off a car door.

Severely injured, he was rushed to the hospital and saved. His press secretary, James Brady, suffered brain damage in the attack that ultimately caused his death decades later. In the aftermath, public approval for Reagan skyrocketed from 51 percent to 67 percent.

Yet Reagan's situation was critically different from Trump's.

In the history of presidential approval polling, respondents often "rally around the flag" after a major event. In fact, the highwater mark for those surveys came for George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, when his approval rating soared to an all-time high of 90 percent. He even beat the record set by his father 11 years earlier, at the conclusion of the first Gulf War.

Reagan likely benefited from a similar effect. Since Reagan was already president, survey respondents could let their human empathy and horror at the event translate into their verdict on his job approval.

But it's far from clear that the same dynamics apply to a candidate for president, who is constantly a target for voter judgement. Indeed, Reagan's approval rating fell again in the months to come, going as low as 35 percent, before rebounding to about 50 percent when he ran for re-election three and a half years later.

Failed assassinations

When it comes to assessing the effect of failed assassination attempts, the case of President Gerald Ford muddies the historical lesson.

An "incumbent" president who had never been elected to either the presidency or vice-presidency, Ford had been appointed to fill a vacancy in the latter and ascended to the former when President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974.

In September 1975, he survived two different assassination attempts, only 17 days apart. Yet his public approval rating barely budged and he lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter a year later.

As for non-incumbent candidates who survived an assassination attempt, one prominent example was then-Alabama governor George Wallace. A lifelong Southern Democrat who famously opposed racial integration, Wallace ran for president on an independent ticket in 1968.

Four years later, he sought the Democratic party's nomination and enjoyed some early success in the polls. On May 15, 1972, however, an assassin riddled him with four bullets. He narrowly survived and spent the rest of his life paralysed from the waist down, and the attack effectively ended his campaign.

This violent history should remind us that public opinion polls are not the most important thing at a moment like this. Rather, what matters is how the country moves ahead in the wake of the attempt on Trump's life, and many paths are possible.

Frighteningly, we could witness the opening of an extended moment of worsening political violence, fueled by a quest for retribution and vengeance. Sadly, such a course of action is completely possible.

But it also tells us that democracy and constitutional self-government cannot function in such a climate.