RALEIGH – One of the most commonly uttered cautions about public-opinion polls is that the wording of questions can shape the answers. This advice is not only common, but also quite good.
Take the death penalty, for example. While public support for capital punishment has been, by polling standards, overwhelming for decades, death-penalty foes are fond of citing a series of Gallup surveys as evidence that their efforts are bearing fruit – that Americans are becoming less willing to countenance the execution of those who commit the most heinous crimes imaginable.
The data do exist. Opponents aren’t making up the numbers. Since the 1930s, Gallup has asked this question: “Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?” The lowest level of support came in 1966, at only 42 percent. But this was an outlier. During the 1970s and 1980s, public support rebounded. In 1994, the highest-ever support came in at 80 percent.
More recently, the percentage answering in the affirmative has been lower than that, in the mid-60s to low-70s. That’s still a strong majority. But it does appear to represent falling support since the mid-1990s.
Here is where appearances begin to be misleading. Unfortunately, Gallup’s question is seriously flawed, not only inaccurately measuring public sentiment on capital punishment at any particular point in time but also likely getting further away from public sentiment over time. You see, most Americans who favor capital punishment do not favor it for every convicted murderer. I certainly don’t. Execution is a fit sentence for certain egregious murders – those with special conditions such as extreme brutality, multiple victims, or murdering victims of other crimes such as rape.
To many poll respondents who want such murderers punished with just sentences, the proper answer to Gallup’s more-general question is either “no” or “I’m not sure.” Indeed, it is likely that over time, respondents have been less likely to reflexively say “yes” and instead to wonder whether they are being asked to apply a sentence they favor in an overly broad manner.
As Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation pointed out, the quality of the polling on this issue has gotten still worse with the introduction of questions asking respondents whether they favor death or “life in prison without the possibility of parole” for “those convicted of murder.” There is still the problem of failing to specify the class of murderers for whom capital punishment is relevant, but added to that is a problematic hypothetical. A least a small number of capital-punishment supporters simply do not have confidence in politicians and courts to abolish parole permanently. They might support an unalterable life sentence in theory, but in practice they don’t believe it exists and therefore err on the side of certainty – the certainty that certain grotesque murderers will never go free because they no longer live.
I do like a relatively new Gallup question, one that is noticeably absent from the press releases of death-penalty foes: “In your opinion, is the death penalty imposed too often, about the right amount, or not often enough?” The question has yielded virtually identical results since 2002. About 23 percent say “too much.” That’s the anti-death penalty crowd. About 25 percent say “about right.” And about 48 percent say “not often enough.”
There is no way to spin the result of this least-flawed question in any way consistent with the activists’ aspirations. The public remains sensible and resolute on the issue, thank goodness.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.