Nov. 10 (UPI) — A Gallup poll released Tuesday said that 49% of adults in the United States are in favor of the death penalty, and 45% are opposed.
While the number of those in favor is similar to last year’s 52%, it marks the first time that support for execution is below the majority level since 1971, when it was also 49%, Gallup said.
Support for the death penalty hit a record low in 1966 when it was at 42%. The highest point of support was in 1994 at 80%.
The polling began Oct. 1-19, which is one day after the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee has since paused executions in the state pending an investigation.
The first Gallup poll on the death penalty was in 1936, when there were 59% in favor and 38% opposed. In most polls, the majority has been in favor.
Most of the exceptions came between 1965 and 1971, when a series of legal challenges to state death penalty laws were in the courts. That effort ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1972 that all state death penalty laws were unconstitutional as written. States then rewrote their death penalty laws, and state executions resumed in 1977, when support had risen to 66%. The amount of people in support of the death penalty stayed high until it dropped to 55% in 2017.
The poll showed that Democrats have mostly been against the death penalty, while Republicans are heavily in favor. Twenty-eight percent of Democrats are in favor while Republicans favor it 73%. Half of independents are in favor.
Thirty-nine percent of people younger than 30 are in favor of state execution.
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