Pew Poll Shows Sharp Drop in Death Penalty Support

Support for the death penal­ty has fall­en sharply by 23 per­cent­age points since 1996, reach­ing its low­est lev­el in almost two decades, accord­ing to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. The 2013 poll also found a 10 point drop in just the last 2 years in respon­dents who say they ​“strong­ly favor” the death penal­ty, from 28% to 18%. The per­cent­age of Americans who say they oppose the death penal­ty has risen to 37%. In 2011, Pew asked respon­dents about the rea­sons behind their views on the death penal­ty, find­ing that the top two rea­sons for oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment were the imper­fect nature of the jus­tice sys­tem and a belief that the death penal­ty is immoral. The drop in pub­lic sup­port coin­cides with an over­all decline in use of the death penal­ty dur­ing the same time peri­od, with both death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions falling dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the 1990s. Six states have repealed the death penal­ty in the last six years, and three gov­er­nors have recent­ly imposed mora­to­ri­ums on executions.

(M. Lipka, ​“Support for death penal­ty drops among Americans,” Pew Research Center, February 12, 2014). See Public Opinion and Studies.