Gallup: Majority Support for the Death Penalty Steady at 55%

Gallup does a yearly poll on support for the death penalty.  This year’s edition finds that support at 55%, essentially unchanged from the level going back three years to 2017.  So this would seem not to be much news.  But if you look a little more closely, there is some news in the poll  —  news not favorable to abolitionist forces.

The first item of news in the partisan split.  Only Democrats oppose capital punishment; Republicans (by a heavy majority) and Independents (by a lesser majority) continue to support it.

The more important news item is that support for the death penalty has become stable after decades of sharp decline.  As the poll shows, and abolitionists are quick to point out when it suits them, support was at 80% in the early to mid-ninties, and fell almost every year for two decades thereafter.  It reached 55%  —  25 points lower  —  in 2017.

Having been at that level for four years now after a long and significant decline, the question arises:  Why has the erosion of support for the death penalty stopped?

I can’t say for sure, but there’s a striking correlation that gives us a hint.  The long decline in support for the death penalty coincided almost exactly with the long decline in murder.  See the crime statistics gathered here.  After a 23 year-long drop, murder started back up in 2015, two years before the erosion of support for capital punishment seems to have ended.  As those same statistics also show, murder has now leveled off, although it’s still at levels above its modern low point six years ago.

So what do we see?  That when the murder rate falls, support for the death penalty also falls (although by not nearly as much).  When the decline in homicide stops and the murder rate more-or-less becomes stable, support for the death penalty also becomes more-or-less stable.

This should surprise no one.  The death penalty is harsh medicine.  No sane person is enthusiastic about putting another human being to death.  It’s the kind of medicine likely to enjoy the greatest subscription when the illness afflicting society is at its most menacing.  The upshot is likewise not that hard to see:  The way to have fewer executions is not to change the law  —  law a clear majority of our citizens (and the Supreme Court) continue to support  —  but, through aggressive policing and more sober sentencing early in a violent criminal’s career, to suppress the attitudes and behavior which, if not reversed, will in too many cases produce a gruesome outcome for which society will see capital punishment as just.