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Reader Federalist notes in a comment that, while abolitionists do indeed lie in the death penalty debate, they're winning.

An outfit called Public Policy Polling has an exemplar of how not to do a poll.  The questions in this North Carolina poll are intentionally loaded to produce an anti-death-penalty result.  Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Carolinian Gomer Pyle used to say, they get the result they wanted.

Aaron Davis and Peyton Craighill report in the WaPo on a poll showing that Marylanders oppose repeal of the death penalty by 60-36. The poll results are here.

When the poll asked the question most polls have asked, "do you favor or oppose the death penalty for people convicted of murder?" the result was 54-41.  However, when they asked the same people the actual question to be decided, "Which view is closer to your own, that Maryland law should allow for the death penalty or should the death penalty be abolished and replaced with life in prison with no chance of parole?" the result was 60-36.

This confirms, as we have noted several times on this blog, that the traditional poll question wording understates the actual support for the death penalty.  The question could be understood to ask about death for all murders, when the actual question is only whether that penalty should be available for the worst murders.

Fortunately, Maryland has a procedure to put the question on the ballot.  The people of Maryland, unlike the people of Connecticut, can overturn their legislators if they vote contrary to the wishes of the people.

Lydia Saad reports for Gallup:

Americans' support for the death penalty as punishment for murder has plateaued in the low 60s in recent years, after several years in which support was diminishing. Sixty-three percent now favor the death penalty as the punishment for murder, similar to 61% in 2011 and 64% in 2010.

The "diminishing" is relative to the all-time high in 1994.  Almost any quantity one cares to measure is "down" if the all-time high is chosen as reference point. "Americans' support for the death penalty has varied widely over the 77 years Gallup has measured it, and now stands at 63%, which is about average for the full trend."

The death penalty retains majority support across all party identifications, all age brackets, both sexes, all regions, and all education levels.  A majority of self-identified conservatives and moderates support it, with a slight edge for opponents among liberals.  On racial lines, Gallup gives numbers only for "whites" and "nonwhites," which is not particularly helpful given that opposition has generally been stronger among blacks than other minorities.

Saad concludes, "The future course of public support for the death penalty may depend as much on the impact of unforeseen tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing or Newtown shootings, as it does on political campaigns by death penalty supporters and opponents. However, for now, views appear to be at a standstill, with just over six in 10 Americans in favor, essentially unchanged since 2010."

The latest Field Poll shows the "yes" vote on Prop 34 ahead of the "no" but still less than a majority.  This poll is something of an outlier, as all the other polls show the "no" vote ahead.  For results and links to the other polls, see our Polls category on this blog.

Update:  Don Thompson has this story for AP.

Ah, the strange world of political polling.

On Friday, the USC Dornsife/LA Times Poll showed the race for Proposition 34 (California's death penalty repeal initiative) to be quite close, as noted in this post.  The change was so dramatic from the previous LAT poll that the Times headline said support for the initiative "surges."  It wasn't that dramatic a change from the polls as a whole, though, as the Field Poll was similarly close, and the Business Roundtable/Pepperdine Poll showed just a 5% lead for the "no" side.

Well, the final installment of the Business Roundtable/Pepperdine Poll is out today, and it actually shows not a surge but a small drop in support for Proposition 34.  The trend line is here.  The lead for the "no" side has widened just a hair since October 11, and it now stands at 41.3% yes to 47.9% no.  The "margin of error" is 3%.  (That is actually just the 95% confidence interval on sampling.  It doesn't consider other sources of error such as methodology issues.)  The "unsure" vote comes in at 10.8%, and historically the voters remaining undecided this late tend to vote no on ballot measures. (See this post.)

Results of the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll show the race for Prop 34 tightening.  When asked the straightforward question, "no" remains ahead, 42-45.  This poll then has the unusual feature of asking the same respondent about the same proposition after first reading the ballot language (which includes a hotly disputed financial assertion).  This is different from the "split sample" method, where half the sample is asked each of two different questions.  In this poll, a few people change their minds on the requestioning, putting the "yes" slightly ahead but less than a majority, 45-42 in the total sample but a razor thin 44-43 among likely voters.

Methodological questions aside, the history of polling on California initiatives is that measures with affirmative support this low this late rarely pass, whether the "yes" is ahead of or behind the "no."  Late-deciding voters tend to break toward "no," as noted in a prior post.

The cause of justice is still ahead, for now, but the financial advantage and favorable press of the friends of murderers remain cause for concern.

BTW, for those wondering what happened to the every-other-Thursday Business Roundtable/Pepperdine poll, they have broken from their usual pattern and will release their final poll next Tuesday.

Off topic but interesting.  Jimmy Kimmel's crew went out on Hollywood Boulevard to ask people, "Who won the presidential debate last night?"  The video is here.

The unusual aspect of this poll is that it was conducted the afternoon before the debate.

Here is a curious result from SurveyUSA on the Colorado marijuana decriminalization proposal, Amendment 64:

Amendment 64, which led by 11 points 5 weeks ago, leads by 5 points today. 48% vote Yes, 43% vote No. There has been an 18-point erosion in support among women, who 5 weeks ago favored Amendment 64 by 10 points, but who today oppose the Amendment by 8 points. There has been 14-points of erosion among those with a 4-year college degree, who 5 weeks ago favored the Amendment by 9 points, and now oppose it by 5 points. A similar but smaller shift occurred among upper-income voters.

The results still show a double-digit lead among men.  Curious that such a dramatic shift would occur among women and not men.

The survey also shows a slight shift in the presidential race.  Obama was ahead by a nose, and now Romney is ahead by a nose.  This change is well within sampling error, though.

The No on 34 campaign has this press release on the new polls on Proposition 34, the California death penalty repeal initiative, previously noted here and here.  They point out something I hadn't noticed in the Pepperdine poll.  Prop 34 has the highest "no" percentage of any of the 11 measures on the statewide ballot.

Politicos generally say that California voters tend to swing toward "no" late in the election period.  I went back to the previous general election and found Field Poll data from late September and late October on three contentious ballot measures and compared the "no" tallies in those polls with the actual final ballot tally. (Please pardon the inelegant formatting.)

Proposition -> "No" late Sept -> "No" late Oct -> "No" final

19, marijuana -> 42 -> 49 -> 53.5
23, greenhouse gas -> 45 -> 48 -> 61.6
25, state budget -> 30 -> 31 -> 44.9

The conventional wisdom seems to generally hold here.  On the marijuana initiative, the voters still undecided in late October broke evenly at the end, but on that one the "no" increased substantially during October.  For the other two, about 2/3 of the voters remaining undecided in the last poll voted no.

The biweekly Business Roundtable / Pepperdine poll is out.  It shows the No vote on Prop. 34 leading but by a smaller margin than the CBS 5 / Survey USA poll noted yesterday.  Totals are yes 42.9% to no 48.1%.  Report is here.  Trend line is here.

Why the difference in the polls?  Well, there are differences in methodology.  Pepperdine's innovative methodology is explained in their release announcing the series last July.  There are also differences in question wording.  Survey USA asked respondents if they were certain to vote yes, certain to vote no, or not certain, thus pushing the "leaners" into the uncertain category.  Pepperdine allows leaning as a response and includes the leaners in the yes/no total.

There is a substantial enthusiasm gap.  On the No side, 2/3 of those saying no in the Pepperdine survey say strongly no.  On the Yes side, a majority are "somewhat" or "leaning" to yes.  The enthusiasm gap combined with the question wording probably accounts for most of the difference in the two polls.

CBS 5 (San Francisco) reports:

On Proposition 34, which would repeal the death penalty, 32% were certain to vote Yes, 48% were certain to vote No, unchanged from a month ago. Whites, a majority of pro-life voters, and a majority of voters in Greater Los Angeles area and the Central Valley opposed the repeal. Only the Bay Area and liberals supported the repeal.

The full results are here.  The "no" responses exceed the "yes" in all age, ethnic, education, and income groups.  The statement in the story that the Bay Area supports repeal is not correct.  The Bay Area result is 38-42.

Jack Leonard and Maura Dolan report in the Los Angeles Times, "Support for an initiative that aims to replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole is trailing 38% to 51%, the poll found."  The opposition narrows, though, if the respondent is read the misleading ballot language.  That language says the initiative will require inmates to work, without mentioning that current law already requires that, and that part of the wages will go to victims, without mentioning that prison work is so sparse and poorly paid that the restitution so produced will be minimal.  Interestingly, adding further misleading information about fiscal consequences produces little additional shift.

The same poll shows the Three Strikes modification initiative winning in a landslide.

The poll results are here, but oddly this document does not include the Three Strikes questions.  Crosstabs are here.

The latest Business Roundtable/Pepperdine poll has the "no" vote on California Proposition 34, death penalty repeal, 10% ahead, with 39.6% yes to 49.3% no.  The "no" vote also has an intensity advantage, with nearly 2/3 of the nos being "strongly no," while only 2/5 of the yeses are "strongly yes."

The trend line is also interesting.  The margin for "no" took a big jump after the Aurora, Colorado massacre and had been narrowing since.  This poll shows a 2-point increase in the margin.

The increase in the lead for "no" came not from an increase in "no" responses (which were actually down a tick) but from a 4% jump in "unsure."  This could be just a statistical glitch.  However, it could be the result of the No on 34 campaign reminding Californians just how bad these murderers are.  That would be consistent with both the loss of intensity in support for the initiative and the movement of "yes" voters into "unsure."

The Field Poll shows the "no" vote on Proposition 34, the California death penalty repeal initiative, narrowly ahead.  Release is here.