Americans Divided On Views of NAACP

As with many organizations that get caught up in partisan politics, the NAACP gets mixed reviews from the American public.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% of voters nationwide have a favorable opinion of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Forty-six percent (46%) offer an unfavorable opinion of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Those figures include 15% with a Very Favorable opinion and 24% with a Very Unfavorable view. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The NAACP has a long history of fighting legal battles to challenge discrimination. It’s most notable accomplishment may have come in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. That case ended school segregation throughout the land, although resistance to the ruling delayed effective implementation for many more years.

Not surprisingly, there are partisan and racial divides when it comes to the NAACP. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Democrats have a favorable opinion of the group that typically aligns with Democratic candidates and 67% of Republicans offer an unfavorable assessment. Those not affiliated with either major party are evenly divided.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook. 

These two national surveys of 1,000 Likely Voters were conducted on June 30-July 1, 2011 and July 2, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error for each survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.