California Democratic Congresswoman and Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez caused a stir on Thursday with when she told Larry King that up to 20% of Muslims support a caliphate and then suggested they’d be willing to use violence to get it.

“We know that there is a small group, and we don’t know how big that is — it can be anywhere between 5 and 20%, from the people that I speak to — that Islam is their religion and who have a desire for a caliphate and to institute that in anyway possible, and in particular go after what they consider Western norms — our way of life,’ Sanchez said on the PoliticKING with Larry King” talk show.

Sanchez went on: “I don’t know how big that is, and depending on who you talk to, but they are certainly — they are willing to go to extremes. They are willing to use and they do use terrorism.”

Despite the verbal qualifiers and apparently anecdotal nature of the claim, Sanchez’s remarks sent alarm through Democratic political ranks. Dems have kept busy the last few weeks lambasting increasingly Islamophobic statements from the GOP presidential primary field, culminating in Donald Trump’s most recent proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Sanchez definitely muddied things up for Democrats here. Enough, in fact, to send Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz onto cable news to try and clean things up.

“I’m not really sure to whom Congresswoman Sanchez has been speaking. I certainly haven’t heard anything like that, and really am not sure what she’s talking about,” Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC host Chris Hayes Thursday night.

Sanchez surely complicated Democrats’ efforts to draw a sharp contrast with GOP candidates over views and treatment of Muslims in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.

The caliphate she referenced is the aspiration among some fundamentalists for a unified Muslim nation ruled by Islamic law. Of course, the concerns goes directly to ISIS claims that it’s established a caliphate in “former’ Iraq and Syria.

But even though it’s unclear how or where Sanchez sourced her “5 to 20%” estimate for the pro-caliphate claim, the best available data (and a caveat here: It’s not great) suggest she is probably correct, whether she knows it or not. On the claim that those people are willing to use violence to get it, there is simply no good available evidence.

Very few good surveys directly ask Muslims around the world about their views on a caliphate. One that did is a 2007 study from WorldPublicOpinion.org, affiliated with the University of Maryland. The study asked about 4,300 Muslims in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan, among other questions, how they personally felt about the al Qaeda goal “to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate.”

Answers varied country to country. But broadly, 36% of respondents said they “strongly support” the goal of a caliphate. Another 29% said they “agree somewhat’ with the proposition.

Sixty-five percent strongly or somewhat agree with the goal of a caliphate easily exceeds Sanchez’s reported range of 5–20% here. A key caveat, of course, is that a 4-country survey falls well short of a reliably reflecting the views of Muslims worldwide.

Another imperfect data point: 30% of Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa said in this Pew Research Center 2010 study that they fully expect to see the establishment of a caliphate in their lifetime.

Looking more broadly gets you much better samples, but with less precise questions. The Pew Research Center surveys tens of thousands of Muslims worldwide every couple years and is considered the best public database on their religious and political attitudes.

The survey in 2013 found varied but widespread support among Muslims for the application of Islamic law, or Sharia, which is a key part of the caliphate aspiration. Support was lowest among Central Asian and European Muslims, but soared among Muslims from South and Southeast Asia and North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

And in every country but one, the percentage of Muslims who say Sharia should apply to non-Muslims tops 20%. Again, these questions don’t specifically ask about the formation of a caliphate, but they do get at attitudes about a Islamic law and its role in governance.

Of course none of this speaks to Sanchez’s second claim, that the 5–20% of Muslims who support a caliphate also support terrorism as a means to achieve it. There is no available evidence backing up this notion. The Pew survey finds large minorities in the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Egypt and Bangladesh who think violence against civilians is sometimes justified, with basically no reliable connection between a belief in violence and support for Sharia.

In fact, Muslims in the Pew survey broadly support religious freedom and specifically reject ISIS.

At the same time, there is a disturbing amount of support for death as the punishment for leaving Islam, also known as apostasy.

So back to Rep Sanchez, who has now walked back her statement a bit, and clarified that she doesn’t think a majority of Muslims support terror or ISIS. She was right to do so, and surely party leaders and donors would approve.

But aside from the political mess she’s caused herself and the Democratic Party here, a key point remains. According to the best data — on Sharia, religious freedom and a caliphate itself — Sanchez’s claim that 5 to 20% of Muslims would like to see a caliphate is likely true. The notion they’d use any means to get it — including violence — probably isn’t.