06 June 2021 :
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:
- About 60% of U.S. adults favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder (down from 65% in August 2020), including 27% who “strongly favor” it, while 39% oppose the death penalty, including 15% who are “strongly opposed.”
- About 78% of U.S. adults said there is some risk that an innocent person could be wrongly executed, and only 21% think there are proper procedures in place to prevent such mistakes
- About 85% of Black adults said Blacks are more likely than whites to be sentenced to death for serious crimes, while only 49% of whites hold this view.
- On the whole, 63% of American adults said the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes, while about half, 48%, of death penalty supporters hold this view.
- Some 77% of Republicans favor the death penalty for murder (down from 84% in 2019) while only 46% of Democrats favor it (down from 49% in 2019).
- By race, Whites and Asians (each 63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) favor the death penalty for murder, while 49% of Black adults do.
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 like 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, Kennesy 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 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. The survey was conducted between 5 and 11 April 2021 on a sample of 5109 people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/politics/death-penalty-polls.html
