More Now Favor the Death Penalty
President Trump has long been calling for more use of the death penalty, and as prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, more Americans agree with the president’s call to action, though they’d like to see it carried out more quickly.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of American Adults now favor the death penalty, up from 54% in 2017 but still down from a high of 67% in July 2012, shortly after the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Before that, support had stayed in a narrow range of 60% to 63% since November 2009.
Twenty-three percent (23%) now oppose capital punishment, down from 31% in 2017, while 15% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on October 29-30, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error 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.
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