“I do think that the Left needs to do a lot more soul-searching, has to tone down its emphasis on the things that shut people out and shut people down. It is, in its most benign form, a poison within,” said Democratic pollster John Zogby.

Zogby and his pollster son, Jeremy Zogby, managing partner of John Zogby Strategies, just wrapped up a deep dive into the views of independents and said what they found was very telling for both parties since Kirk’s slaying at a Utah college, allegedly by a left-wing critic.

Democrats & the liberal media have spent years claiming they are at war with literal fascists and Nazis for the future of democracy. Now they’re trying to tell us this is an issue for “both sides.”

It’s not. These unhinged, dangerous lies have consequences. It has to stop. pic.twitter.com/cM0tWWAN8o

— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) September 15, 2025

Independents were asked what they saw as the weaknesses of the Republican Party and said it is too “offensive.” But they saw as strengths the GOP’s America First focus, its promotion of businesses, and its anti-crime campaign, an agenda Kirk pushed in his campus appearances.

Democrats won credit for backing working-class families and fighting for social justice. But the party’s top two weaknesses were spending too much time attacking Trump and pushing woke policies.

The polling duo said the results suggest a potential path out of the nation’s political quagmire. Republicans could do more for the middle class, they said, and the Left could tone down its anger at Trump and his supporters.

But in light of the comments some on the left have made about Kirk’s killing, the Zogbys said it’s liberals who have to make the biggest change, starting with ending efforts to silence those they disagree with.

Senator Eric Schmitt OBLITERATES the “both sides bullshit” coming from the left in under 2 minutes.

The gaslighting about political violence ends right here. This clip says it all.

• Congressional baseball practice shooting? Left wing

• Burned down cities (Summer of Love)?… pic.twitter.com/lBOxlzi10i

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 16, 2025

“While the Democrats get high marks for caring about the middle class and caring about social and racial justice, they’re seen as too woke. And that has been a threat to freedom of speech. And, in fact, one can draw a straight line between the shouting down of people on our campuses, and then ultimately the shooting of someone that is disagreed with on a college campus. That’s very troubling to me,” said John Zogby.

He was cautious not to blame specific politicians or the whole Democratic Party for political violence. “Too broad a stroke to blame whole parties and ideologies for one act or a series of acts. Actors have serious personal issues that trigger their behavior,” said Zogby, who co-grades Trump for the weekly Washington Secrets White House Report Card.

Addressing the “both sides do it” debate, Zogby said neither side is right. He said conservatives have a vision and message, but they are out of date.

“In this specific case, Charlie Kirk was able to provide an antidote to campus wokism, an alternative to a pattern of suppressing free speech that disenfranchised lots of young people,” he said, adding, “Kirk was popular and smart, but he addressed his audience by harkening back to an America pre-diversity.”

And the Democrats, he added, have stood firm on woke politics that offend the Right. “On the left, what may very well have begun as a call to more sensitivity on behalf of those disenfranchised because of race, gender, sexual preference, etc., morphed from a serious attempt to acknowledge living in a diverse world into a bludgeon, a runaway train, a pattern that had no focus beyond ‘Gotcha.’ Wokism has been eating its young and its supporters for years,” he said.

Their poll showed the lowest ever approval rating of the Democratic Party by independents, another factor pushing the Left to find a new vision.

Jeremy Zogby said Republicans are in a better position with their focus on crime, heightened by the slaying of Kirk and violence in big cities.

CHARLIE KIRK AND CHARLOTTE SLAYINGS ENDING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

“I see Republicans with the ability to address crime and safety front and center going into these national elections, and the Democrats struggling with, ‘Where do we want to take this country, and what does that look like, and how do we know we’ll have achieved it?’” he said.

He added that practicing woke politics is not the answer: “The Democrats and the notion of what they do about woke is clearly not connecting with people and making voters’ lives better. And so the Democratic Party has to ask themselves, ‘What is the end?’”