Californians remain divided on death penalty
New UC Berkeley poll shows support for Governor Newsom’s moratorium
June 17, 2019
California voters narrowly support Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order suspending the state’s death penalty but still seem disinclined to abolish capital punishment outright, according to a new Berkeley IGS Poll.
Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they supported Newsom’s moratorium, while 48% said they did not. Asked generally if the death penalty should be kept as “punishment for serious crimes,” 63% said yes.
Meanwhile, just a slim majority of those surveyed—53%—said they would vote against a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the death penalty; 46% percent said they would vote to do away with the death penalty.
The results aren’t that different than a 2016 vote to end capital punishment, where Californians voted 53% to 47% to keep the death penalty in place, suggesting opinions in the state have not shifted much when it comes to capital punishment, said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS Poll, which is part of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
The poll surveyed 4,435 registered voters via email in English and Spanish from June 4 to 10. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.