Opposition to the death penal­ty appears to grow the longer a coun­try has been with­out the pun­ish­ment. A Gallup International poll in 2000 found that 60% of west­ern Europeans opposed the death penal­ty, while 60% of east­ern Europeans (where abo­li­tion is still being debat­ed) sup­port the death penal­ty. In France, a TNS Sofres poll revealed that two decades after abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, 49% of respon­dents opposed rein­tro­duc­tion of the pol­i­cy com­pared with 44% who want­ed to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. It took until 1999 to reach the point where more French peo­ple opposed the death penal­ty than were in favor. Similarly, in Germany, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was his­tor­i­cal­ly divid­ed among East and West Germans. In West Germany, an Allensbach poll reg­is­tered pub­lic sup­port for rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty at 55% when the nation banned the prac­tice in 1949. In 2000, the per­cent­age of West German respon­dents in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment had plum­met­ed to 23%. For East Germans, polling found that 37% of respon­dents were in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2000. (Financial Times, August 22, 2003) See Public Opinion and International Death Penalty.

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