Pew Poll Finds Uptick in Death Penalty Support, Though Still Near Historic Lows

Just under 54% of Americans say they sup­port the death penal­ty and 39% say they are opposed, accord­ing to the results of a Pew Research poll released June 11, 2018. The poll — admin­is­tered between April 25 and May 1, one month after President Trump called for the death penal­ty for drug traf­fick­ing—reflects a five-point increase in sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, up from the record-low 49% record­ed in Pew’s 2016 poll.

The results, which are in line with the 55% sup­port lev­el found by the Gallup orga­ni­za­tion in its October 2017 poll, are the sec­ond-low­est lev­el of death-penal­ty sup­port record­ed since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed exe­cu­tions to resume in 1976. The Gallup find­ings marked a 45-year low in that poll. 

Support for the death penal­ty remained low­est, and oppo­si­tion high­est, among Democrats (35% in favor, 59% opposed), Blacks (36% in favor, 52% opposed), and peo­ple with post­grad­u­ate degrees (42% in favor, 56% opposed). The high­est lev­els of sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment were report­ed among Republicans (77% in favor, 17% opposed), White evan­gel­i­cal Protestants (73% in favor, 19% opposed), and men (61% in favor, 34% opposed). Women and the youngest vot­ers (aged 18 – 29) were even­ly divid­ed on the issue, with 1% more say­ing they sup­port­ed the death penalty. 

The largest shift since 2016 was among those iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as polit­i­cal inde­pen­dents, with report­ed sup­port increas­ing from 44% in 2016 to 52% this year. Pew does not report changes in par­ty affil­i­a­tion, and part of the shift with Independents may rep­re­sent a change in those who self-iden­ti­fy as Independent, rather than changed beliefs on the part of indi­vid­u­als who pre­vi­ous­ly called themselves Independents. 

Long-term trends, how­ev­er, con­tin­ue to show a clear decline in death-penal­ty sup­port among all demo­graph­ic groups. Support fell from 78% in 1996, to 64% in 2007, to 54% today. That decline has been sharpest among Democrats, whose sup­port has dropped 36 per­cent­age points since 1996, but sup­port among Independents has fall­en 25 per­cent­age points dur­ing that peri­od, and Republican sup­port has fall­en 10 per­cent­age points. (Click here to enlarge image.)