Black people oppose defunding the police by an overwhelming margin of 20 percentage points, according to a new poll that revealed broad support for reforming local law enforcement over proposals to gut resources.
Left-wing activists are urging that police departments be defunded after George Floyd, a black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. But most across the political spectrum, including most rank-and-file Democrats, are opposed. Instead, they support significant reforms to policing practices, a YouGov survey for HuffPost found.
“Self-described liberals support defunding the police by a 13-point margin,” HuffPost reported. “But nearly every other ideological and demographic group opposes it. Democrats and Democratic leaners oppose it by a 4-percentage point margin, and Black Americans oppose it by a 20-point margin.”
Only about a quarter of black people supported defunding the police, while 49% opposed it.
In the poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, 27% of adults expressed support for defunding the police. But when presented with a host of reforms to choose from, these proposals enjoyed vastly more support. For instance, 73% backed a ban on chokeholds, 72% approved of the creation of a federal registry that would compile complaints against police officers, and 69% supported the idea of national standards to regulate the use of force.
Public polling has shown voters are more receptive to police reform in the aftermath of Floyd’s death and after the wave of national protests that ensued. Surveys also have revealed broader agreement with the notion that black people suffer systemic racism from law enforcement. But the findings in the YouGov poll suggested that voter approval of corrective police reforms has limits.
“There’s more modest support for barring the use of ‘no-knock’ warrants in drug cases (49%) and for limiting the transfer of military equipment to police departments (46%),” HuffPost reported. “The public is almost evenly divided on a proposal to cut the budget of their local police department, and instead increase spending on services like social workers and mental health professionals.”
The poll did not provide a margin of error.
