Incidents more than doubled nationwide amid heightened tensions following the Trump rally shooting in Pennsylvania and a series of cases where multiple officials were targeted simultaneously in states like Washington and Tennessee.

Now publicly available and comprehensively coded, our first-of-its-kind dataset captures more than 750 events targeting a wide range of local officials – from elected leaders to poll workers – and will be updated monthly going into the 2024 election.

Threats and harassment against local officials present a significant challenge to American democracy by discouraging civic engagement, undermining the work of public servants, and creating unprecedented stress on the cornerstones of democratic society including elections, education, and public safety processes. A heightened environment of fear among local officials seems ubiquitous, but the data behind the phenomenon is opaque. This pilot project is the first of its kind – the beginning of an ongoing longitudinal study to systematically evaluate threat and harassment incidents across the United States using public event-level data.