A California Business Roundtable/Pepperdine University poll taken about two weeks ago showed those opposing Prop 34's repeal of the death penalty ahead by a mere two percent, 47% to 45%.
[Editor's Note: See also follow-up post here.]
Along came the Aurora massacre. Sausage, meet grinder. The new poll shows the repeal measure being blown out, 55.7% to 35.9%. This is no surprise. It has been known for years that support for the death penalty surges when respondents are focused on a specific case, rather than having the question put to them in general, hypothetical and often misleading terms.
Thus, at present, it appears that Prop 34 will meet its fate for exactly the right reason: There are some cases so horrible that preventing the jury from even considering capital punishment is a miscarriage of justice.
The specific results of the poll are:
| Strongly Yes | 16.6% |
| Somewhat Yes | 9.4% |
| Leaning Yes | 9.9% |
| Yes | 35.9% |
| No | 55.7% |
| Leaning No | 9.7% |
| Somewhat No | 8.2% |
| Strongly No | 37.8% |
| Unsure | 8.3% |
The arguments in support of the ballot measure to abolish the death penalty are exaggerated at best and, in most cases, misleading and erroneous. Proposition 34 is being funded primarily by a wealthy, left-wing company out of Chicago, the ACLU, and similarly-oriented trust funds. It includes provisions that would only make our prisons less safe for both other prisoners and prison officials and significantly increase the costs to taxpayers due to life-time medical costs, the increased security required to coerce former death-row inmates to work, etc. The amount “saved” in order to help fund law enforcement is negligible and only for a short period of time. Bottom line, the “SAFE” Act is an attempt by those who are responsible for the high costs and lack of executions to now persuade voters to abandon it on those grounds. Obviously, these arguments would disappear if the death penalty was carried forth in accordance with the law. Get the facts at and supporting evidence at http://cadeathpenalty.webs.com and http://waiting4justice.org/.