More Than Half of Americans Still Support Death Penalty

America may not be ready to abandon capital punishment. Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) addressed the subject in a poll, which was carried out between 3/26/14 and 8/26/14.

The poll asked people to respond to the following question: “Should the U.S. abolish the death penalty?” Out of 100, 860 participants of the poll 43% want the capital punishment system to be abolished, while 57%  don’t share this opinion.

Participants represented different countries: the USA - 48%, Canada - 5%, Britain - 12%, Australia - 7% and other countries - 28%.

According to Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, “Most Americans are poorly informed about the likely sentences which capital murderers would receive if not given the death penalty. The public wants to be sure that murderers will not, in fact, be released after a few years and that the families of victims are compensated for their tragedy. However, people express doubts about the death penalty when presented with some adequate alternatives. And as the support for alternatives to the death penalty appears to be growing, the death penalty may once again become a minority position in this country.”

Male votes prevail in both “Yes” (77%) and “No” (77%) camps.

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, finds that “Men and women don't differ significantly in their perception of vengeance. However, men are more likely to find vengeance satisfying because they're emotionally simpler, as well as slightly more bloodthirsty. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that intrarace gender differences are trivial compared to differences between blacks and whites on this issue,” Alex points out.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.