WASHINGTON — A Gallup poll released Nov. 10 found that 49% of U.S. adults favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 45% oppose it. Gallup said this is the first time support has fallen below a majority since 1971.
Gallup reported that support also stood at 49% in 1971 and was last lower in 1966, when 42% favored capital punishment. Support peaked at 80% in 1994, according to Gallup’s historical polling.
When Gallup first asked the question in 1936, 59% favored the death penalty.
Gallup interviewed 1,200 adults by telephone from Oct. 1 to Oct. 19. This year’s result is three percentage points below last year’s 52%, a change that is not statistically significant.
Gallup described the new reading as “statistically similar to last year’s 52%.”
The Death Penalty Information Center’s 2025 report recorded opposition at 44% that year, the highest level since May 1966.
Gallup’s trend data show support ranging from 52% to 56% annually between 2017 and 2025. The center described the 2025 Gallup reading of 52% as a five-decade low.
Gallup reported that support has declined most sharply among Democrats and independents, while Republican support has remained comparatively consistent.
Support among Democrats is now 28%, down 28 percentage points from 2000 and 47 points from 1994. Among independents, support stands at 50%, while 73% of Republicans favor the death penalty.
Republican support is among the lowest Gallup has measured for the group, which has generally registered around 80% support since the 1990s.
The gap between Republican and Democratic support is now 45 percentage points.
Gallup also found that younger adults are substantially less supportive of capital punishment.
Among adults ages 18 to 29, just 39% favor the death penalty, while 59% oppose it.
Support stands at 49% among adults ages 30 to 49, 54% among those 50 to 64, and 53% among those 65 and older.
In 2000, 61% of adults ages 18 to 29 favored capital punishment.
In a 2024 analysis, Gallup found that 42% of Generation Z adults and 47% of millennials supported the death penalty, compared with approximately six in 10 adults in older generations.
Age differences also appeared within political parties in the 2020-2024 data.
Among younger Democrats, 27% favored the death penalty, compared with 38% of older Democrats. Among younger Republicans, 69% supported capital punishment, compared with 82% of older Republicans.
Gallup noted that two decades earlier, there were “no meaningful age differences.”
The latest poll began the day after Tennessee’s unsuccessful attempt to execute death row prisoner Christa Pike on Sept. 30.
Pike survived the administration of lethal injection drugs and was transported to a hospital. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee subsequently suspended the state’s remaining scheduled execution for 2026 and ordered an independent investigation.
The incident renewed scrutiny of execution protocols and the possibility of severe suffering during lethal injections.
The polling results also come amid a major development in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Nov. 5 that he would seek to commute the death sentences of all 548 people on the state’s death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
According to California’s Habeas Corpus Resource Center, Newsom can commute the sentences of approximately 30% of those on death row without additional approval.
The remaining approximately 70% require approval from the California Supreme Court because the state Constitution requires a recommendation from a majority of the justices for clemency involving individuals convicted of two or more felonies.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer criticized Newsom’s announcement.
In a Nov. 5 statement, Spitzer said that in cases involving particularly heinous crimes, he had pursued and would “continue to pursue the death penalty.”
He also argued that Newsom’s decision “ripped away a sense of security and finality” for crime victims.
The latest Gallup findings follow earlier polling showing growing concern about whether capital punishment is administered fairly.
Gallup’s 2023 fairness survey found that 50% of Americans believed the death penalty was applied unfairly, while 47% said it was applied fairly.
It was the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 2000 that more respondents considered the death penalty unfairly applied than fairly applied.
Among Democrats, 28% said capital punishment was applied fairly, compared with 68% of Republicans.
In its 2024 analysis, Gallup noted that younger generations came of age during a period when numerous states imposed moratoriums on executions or repealed their death penalty laws.
Some of those policy changes followed cases in which people sentenced to death were subsequently exonerated.
A separate Gallup measure from May 2026 found that 52% of Americans considered the death penalty morally acceptable, while 39% considered it morally wrong.
A year earlier, the figures were 56% and 35%, respectively.
Gallup has also found that Americans express different preferences when asked to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
When Gallup last asked that question in October 2019, 36% preferred the death penalty, while 60% chose life imprisonment without parole.
That same month, 56% favored the death penalty when asked the standard question about capital punishment for people convicted of murder.
In 1997, by comparison, 61% preferred the death penalty over life imprisonment, while 29% preferred life imprisonment.
The historical trend reflects substantial changes in public opinion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia.
In that ruling, the Supreme Court invalidated existing death penalty statutes because of the arbitrary manner in which capital punishment was being imposed.
States subsequently revised their laws, and executions resumed in 1977, when Gallup measured support at 66%.
Support remained at or above 60% for the next four decades before falling to 55% in 2017.
The decline in public support has coincided with a long-term reduction in new death sentences.
The Death Penalty Information Center’s 2025 year-end report found that just 23 new death sentences were imposed nationwide that year.
The report also found that when capital juries were asked to choose between life imprisonment and death, 56% recommended life imprisonment.
Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said the latest Gallup findings reflect “a pivotal turning point in public opinion on the death penalty.”
Porter attributed the shift to Americans’ reactions to “recent botched executions” and a “proposal to livestream an execution.”
She also pointed to clemency decisions by governors from both major political parties, arguing that capital punishment is increasingly being viewed as a failed policy.
Gallup attributed much of the long-term decline in death penalty support to generational changes, particularly the views of younger Americans, who are substantially less supportive of capital punishment than older generations.
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