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Thread: United States Capital Punishment Public Opinion Polling

  1. #101
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    A Correctly Worded Death Penalty Poll in North Carolina

    By Kent Scheidegger
    crimeandconsequences.com

    As we have noted a number of times on this blog, the question wording in polls about the death penalty produces widely varying results. The most common failure in poll questions on this subject is to ask a question that implies the respondent is being asked to specify a punishment for murder generally rather than the worst murders. Punishment for the worst murders is the actual policy question to be decided. Virtually no one today is arguing we should execute all murderers, yet poll respondents are regularly asked that.

    Now we see a ray of light in the darkness. The High Point University/News & Record Poll asked a question that is worded far better than the big boys at Gallup et al. seem to be able to manage. A sample of 446 North Carolina residents were asked between Sept. 26 and Oct. 1:

    "Thinking in general about your views of the death penalty, are there any crimes for which you believe people should receive the death penalty?"




    Yes - 72 percent

    No - 24 percent

    Don't know/refused - 4 percent

    What happens when you just ask about the death penalty for murder generally (an irrelevant question since no state has the death penalty for murder generally)?

    "Do you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?"

    Strongly favor - 30 percent

    Favor - 33 percent

    Oppose - 17 percent

    Strongly Oppose - 11 percent

    Don't know/refused - 9 percent

    Some people who believe there are crimes for which people should get the death penalty do not say they favor it for unspecified murder. Similarly, more people oppose the death penalty for unspecified murder than say that no one should get the death penalty.

    There is remarkably little variation on this by state or region. The people of Connecticut are pretty much the same on this as the people of North Carolina.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...enal.html#more

  2. #102
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Solid Majority Continue to Support Death Penalty

    WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About six in 10 Americans favor the use of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder, similar to 2014. This continues a gradual decline in support for the procedure since reaching its all-time high point of 80% in 1994.

    Thirty-seven percent oppose the death penalty, slightly higher than in recent years, in part because this year, only 2% of Americans say they have no opinion on the topic.

    These results come from Gallup's annual Crime poll, conducted Oct. 7-11, 2015. While the public has, with one exception, favored the death penalty over the 78 years Gallup has asked this question, support for the measure has varied considerably. The low point for support, 42%, came in the 1960s, with support reaching its peak in the mid-1990s and generally declining since that point. Over the past decade, however, there has been minimal fluctuation in the percentage of adults who favor the death penalty, with support always at or above 60%.

    This reliably high majority of support belies a powerful current of change in recent years that has rendered the death penalty a far rarer judicial outcome than before. In May, Nebraska became the 19th state (along with D.C.) to ban the death penalty, and the seventh state since 2007. Meanwhile, the number of death sentences issued in 2014 was the lowest since the reinstatement of the punishment in 1976, and the number of executions carried out in 2014 was one of the lowest on record.

    Blacks Far Less Likely to Support Death Penalty


    A large gulf exists between whites and blacks in their support for the death penalty. In a combined 2014-2015 sample, 68% of whites said they were in favor of the death penalty, while 29% were opposed. Blacks tilt almost as heavily in the opposite direction -- 55% oppose the death penalty, compared with 39% in favor. This pattern is in alignment with previous Gallup findings, including in 2007. The opposition among blacks may be related to the disparity between blacks making up 42% of the current death row population but just 13% of the overall U.S. population.

    The death penalty remains a divisive issue among political partisans, with Democrats (49%) far less likely to be in favor of the punishment than Republicans (82%).

    Majority Believe Death Penalty Applied Fairly

    Fifty-three percent of Americans say that, generally speaking, the death penalty is applied fairly today in the U.S. While still a majority, this year's rate is below the high of 61% in 2005. Forty-one percent, meanwhile, say they believe the death penalty is applied unfairly.

    Plurality of Americans Say Death Penalty Not Imposed Enough

    When asked about the frequency with which the death penalty is imposed, 40% of Americans say it is not imposed enough, with the remainder equally divided between saying it is imposed "too often" (27%) or "about the right amount" (27%). The proportion of Americans saying the death penalty is not imposed enough has fallen from a high of 53% in 2005, just as the number of executions has generally gone down over that time period.

    Bottom Line

    By many metrics -- the number of states that have banned the death penalty, the number of executions carried out or the actual population of inmates currently on death row -- the death penalty appears to be losing popularity in statehouses and courthouses across the country. But the public at large continues to support the use of the death penalty. A majority continue to assess the punishment as applied fairly, and a plurality wish it were applied more often.

    But there is no denying that the death penalty is controversial -- reflected, at least somewhat, by the deep racial divide it causes. The cascade of exonerations for once-condemned inmates and the plethora of academic literature exploring the alleged disparities in the application of the punishment appear to have made juries less likely to issue a death penalty sentence and legislatures more likely to ban it.

    Survey Methods

    Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 7-11, 2015, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,015 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

    Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/186218/so...h-penalty.aspx

  3. #103
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    More Now Favor the Death Penalty
    Rasmussen Report — November 1, 2018

    President Trump has long been calling for more use of the death penalty, and as prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, more Americans agree with the president’s call to action, though they’d like to see it carried out more quickly.

    A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of American Adults now favor the death penalty, up from 54% in 2017 but still down from a high of 67% in July 2012, shortly after the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Before that, support had stayed in a narrow range of 60% to 63% since November 2009.

    Twenty-three percent (23%) now oppose capital punishment, down from 31% in 2017, while 15% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, [see below Source]

    The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on October 29-30, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

    Source


    National Survey of 1,000 American Adults

    Conducted October 29-30, 2018
    By Rasmussen Reports

    Questions asked:

    1* Do you favor or oppose the death penalty?

    2* (Asked of 612 Americans Who Favor the Death Penalty) Do you favor the carrying out of death sentences in a more timely fashion? Or should the death sentence be delayed as long as necessary to allow all legal appeals to be exhausted?

    3* Does your state execute those convicted and sentenced to death in a timely fashion?

    NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence
    "Sorry for the delay, I got caught in traffic." — Rodney Scott Berget, South Dakota, October 29, 2018 — final words.

  4. #104
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    November 18, 2021

    Americans' opinions about the death penalty have been relatively stable in recent years after a decline in 2017. The current 54% of U.S. adults who say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers is essentially unchanged from readings over the past four years and remains lower than any other measurement since March 1972 (50%).

    Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 1-19, 2021, with a random sample of 823 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/357440/...ecade-low.aspx

    The lowest was in 1966, when only 42% of answers were in favor of the death penalty for murder.

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/1606/death-penalty.aspx
    Last edited by Steven AB; 11-22-2021 at 09:00 AM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

  5. #105
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    It has been found in 2020 by the Pew Research Center that support for the death penalty is 65% instead of 52% when respondents are polled online rather than by telephone call.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...phone-surveys/

    Since Gallup are asking their question only by phone calls, it is no exaggeration to say that what they measured over the few past years is not a decrease in support for the death penalty as the mainstream media say, but an increase in the coercive nature of the modern thought police.

    Indeed, we always talk about Gallup antique question asking merely to polled voters whether they support the death penalty "for a person convicted of murder", or other polls asking whether in such a case they prefer the death penalty or life imprisonment (assuming that the latter can be maintained "with absolutely no possibility of parole" without the death penalty, which is a lie — if the death penalty disappeared, life without parole would be next).

    However, the issue has never been whether the citizenry supports or prefers the death penalty for the thousands of offenders who are convicted of murder every year in the United States, but only for a few of the most horrific cases for which capital punishment is or can be applied today.

    Thus, Joseph Bessette and Andrew Sinclair conducted a study in 2019 and a sequel in 2020 to better assess what the people think about the ultimate penalty:

    We asked respondents whether they favored the death penalty for any of fifteen specific types of murder commonly found in death penalty statutes and among those sentenced to death in the United States.

    Almost half of the respondents who opposed the death penalty on the first question, when given this list, selected at least one crime from it.

    Of all the respondents who answered these questions: 86% selected at least one crime, including 80% who selected "raping and murdering a child" and 75% who selected "killing dozens of people as part of a terrorist attack."

    At the low end, only 49% selected "killing someone in the course of a robbery."

    https://www.realclearpolicy.com/arti...ty_790058.html

    http://s10294.pcdn.co/wp-content/upl...une-8-2021.pdf

    A similar result is found even when the question merely alludes to the crime without details:

    https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/...hest-ever.html
    Last edited by Steven AB; 02-25-2023 at 02:50 PM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

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