Pew Poll: Support for Death Penalty Declining, But Higher in Internet Polling than Phone Polling

A new poll by the Pew Research Center reports that sup­port for the death penal­ty is down in the United States but may be high­er than pre­vi­ous esti­mates because some poll respon­dents are unwill­ing to admit to a live poll­ster that they sup­port capital punishment.

Results of Pew’s April 5 – 11, 2021 on-line sur­vey of U.S. adults, released on June 2, indi­cat­ed that 60% of respon­dents said they favored the death penal­ty for per­sons con­vict­ed of mur­der, down from the 65% lev­el of sup­port report­ed by on-line respon­dents in August 2020 and September 2019. In a phone sur­vey over what Pew said was ​“a near­ly iden­ti­cal peri­od” in August 2020, 52% of adults said that they favored the death penalty.

Pew found that dur­ing the last three times in which it sur­veyed Americans about their views on the death penal­ty, on-line respon­dents were 9 – 12 per­cent­age points more like­ly to say they favored cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment than were respon­dents who pro­vid­ed respons­es to a live inter­view­er on the phone. Pew said that ​“sur­vey ques­tions that ask about sen­si­tive or con­tro­ver­sial top­ics — and views of the death penal­ty may be one such top­ic — may be more like­ly to elic­it dif­fer­ent respons­es across modes.” That dif­fer­ence, it posit­ed, is ​“per­haps attrib­ut­able to social desirability bias.”

Courtney Kennedy, Pew’s direc­tor of sur­vey research, told the New York Times the researchers were ​“absolute­ly” con­vinced that social desir­abil­i­ty bias was the most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the dif­fer­ences between the respons­es to the on-line and phone sur­veys. The death penal­ty, Kennedy said, is ​“a bit of a touchy sub­ject, it’s kind of sen­si­tive, and admit­ting that you hold an opin­ion that has such pro­found impli­ca­tions for some­body else — not every­body wants to engage with that with a stranger.”

Because of this, Pew has shift­ed its method­ol­o­gy in death-penal­ty polling from phone inter­views to on-line sur­vey­ing. However, it said, tele­phone sur­veys con­tin­ue to ​“pro­vide a basis for exam­in­ing long-term changes in the public’s atti­tudes toward the death penal­ty.” Those sur­veys, Pew not­ed, ​“have shown a steady decline in sup­port for the death penal­ty in the United States since the mid-1990s.”

The April 2021 on-line sur­vey found that 60% of respon­dents said that they favored the death penal­ty, while 39% said they opposed it. Opposition to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment grew by five per­cent­age points com­pared to on-line sur­veys tak­en in August 2020 and September 2019. Strikingly, how­ev­er, a major­i­ty of respon­dents report­ed sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in the way the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered. Although 64% of respon­dents thought ​“the death penal­ty is moral­ly jus­ti­fied” when a per­son ​“com­mits a crime like mur­der,” most respon­dents —a near­ly four-to-one mar­gin — report­ed that the death penal­ty risks exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. 78% of respon­dents told Pew that “[t]here is some risk that an inno­cent per­son will be put to death,” while only 21% respond­ed that “[t] here are ade­quate safe­guards to ensure that no inno­cent per­son will be put to death.” ​“Only 30% of death penal­ty sup­port­ers — and just 6% of oppo­nents — say ade­quate safe­guards exist to pre­vent inno­cent peo­ple from being exe­cut­ed,” Pew said.

Respondents also dis­agreed with the notion that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment con­tributes to pub­lic safe­ty. 63% of on-line respon­dents told Pew that ​“the death penal­ty does not deter peo­ple from com­mit­ting seri­ous crimes,” com­pared to 35% who said they believed the death penal­ty was a deter­rent. A major­i­ty of U.S. adults sur­veyed (56%) also said that ​“Black peo­ple are more like­ly than White peo­ple to be sen­tenced to death for com­mit­ting sim­i­lar crimes.” 41% said that ​“White peo­ple and Black peo­ple are equal­ly like­ly” to receive the death penal­ty for sim­i­lar crimes. The results reflect­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent world­views on this issue depend­ing upon a respondent’s race. 85% of Black adults respond­ed that Black peo­ple are more like­ly than Whites to be sen­tenced to death for sim­i­lar crimes, falling to 61% of Hispanic adults and 49% of White adults.

The poll found sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in views of the death penal­ty based upon respon­dents’ race, age, edu­ca­tion, and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. 64% of Whites and Asians said they sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, com­pared to 56% of Hispanics and 49% of Blacks. Support for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was high­est among adults aged 50 – 64 (69%), falling to 60% among those over 65, 58% among those aged 30 – 49, and 51% among those aged 18 – 29.

Whether respon­dents favored or opposed the death penal­ty was inverse­ly relat­ed to their lev­el of edu­ca­tion. Those with a high school edu­ca­tion or less were most like­ly to favor the death penal­ty (68%), drop­ping to 63% among those with some col­lege edu­ca­tion, 49% among col­lege grad­u­ates, and 44% among those with postgraduate education.

77% of Republicans — and 82% of Republicans who iden­ti­fied them­selves as con­ser­v­a­tive —said they favored the death penal­ty, with 23% and 17%, respec­tive­ly, say­ing they opposed it. 53% of Democrats — and 64% of those iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as lib­er­al — said they opposed the death penal­ty, ver­sus 46% and 36%, respec­tive­ly, who said they favor it.