Atlanta Voters Want to Stop Cop City and Oppose Constructing New Jails
By Anika Dandekar
From September 15-18, 2023, Data for Progress conducted polling in partnership with the Vote to Stop Cop City coalition regarding Atlanta voters’ attitudes toward the construction of a police training facility in Weelaunee Forest known as “Cop City,” as well as recent legal events pertaining to protestors and overcrowding and deaths at Fulton County Jail. We find that the majority of Atlanta voters believe they should be able to voice their views on the Cop City issue directly by holding a vote on the ballot, and a plurality would vote to repeal the land lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) if it were on the ballot. The survey reveals low awareness overall of activists’ civil rights struggles. We also find that majorities of Atlanta voters oppose the construction of a new jail and widely support addressing root causes of overcrowding at the existing jail.
Voter Attitudes Toward Cop City
Atlanta groups have faced numerous setbacks by city officials in their efforts to get a referendum about Cop City on the ballot, with Mayor Andre Dickens calling a campaign for a referendum “futile”. To understand how voters view the referendum in general, we asked whether voters should be able to determine how the land the city has leased for the police training facility should be used, or if the city should abide by elected officials’ decision to lease the land to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF). We find that a majority of Atlanta voters believe a vote should be held to determine how the land is used, by a +26-point margin. This includes 73% of Democrats and 51% of Independents. The majority of Republican voters in the city respond that the city should defer to its elected officials’ decision on the lease.
We then tested the ballot language in question, asking if voters would vote for or against the measure, with a vote for the measure repealing the city’s lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation and a vote against the measure indicating that the lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation should remain in place. When Atlanta voters are presented with the ballot language, listed below, a plurality respond that they would vote for the measure by a +5-point margin:
Shall the City Council repeal City of Atlanta Ordinance 21-O-0367 authorizing the ground lease of 381 acres of forested land to the Atlanta Police Foundation for the construction of a $90 million training facility.
We then reasked the ballot initiative question with additional clarification on what a “for” and an “against” vote would mean. We find that the +5-point margin remains unchanged with this clarification; 44% of Atlanta voters say they would vote in favor of the measure. Fifty-two percent of Democrats, 39% of Independents, and 21% of Republicans in Atlanta would vote for the ballot measure repealing the city’s lease to the APF. Eighteen percent are undecided on this issue.
We also asked Atlanta voters about the validity of a variety of statements that have been made regarding the protests and law enforcement activity around the construction of the Cop City facility. Amid contradictory and ambiguous information from officials, especially regarding the Georgia State Patrol’s fatal shooting of protester Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, we find high rates of Atlanta voters saying that they have not heard enough to say whether many of these statements are true or false. Among statements where most voters have heard enough to say whether it is true or false, Atlanta voters believe:
The majority of those demonstrating against Cop City are not militant anarchists, by a 23-point margin;
Atlanta’s elected officials have inaccurately represented details, such as finances, surrounding the Cop City facility to citizens, by a 14-point margin;
Peaceful protestors have been wrongfully arrested, by a 12-point margin; and
Georgia and Atlanta law enforcement officials have violated activists’ rights to demonstrate peacefully, by a 6-point margin.
Notably, as the city refuses to count referendum petition signatures, 40% of Atlanta’s voters believe that the Vote to Stop Cop City coalition collected enough signatures to get a vote on the ballot regarding the land lease to the APF, while only 10% believe this is false. Half of Atlanta voters haven’t formed an opinion.
Voter Attitudes Toward Fulton County Jail System
We then asked Atlanta voters whether they support or oppose a proposal to build a new Fulton County Jail facility, which would be paid for, in part, by raising property taxes. Majorities of Democratic (55%) and Independent (55%) voters, as well as a third of Republican voters, in the city oppose this proposal to construct a new jail.
Lastly, we asked Atlanta voters about solutions to overcrowding and recent deaths at the existing Fulton County Jail. We asked if voters prefer that lawmakers address the root causes of overcrowding — by investing in community support programs, setting affordable bonds for nonviolent charges, and releasing those with petty or misdemeanor charges while they await their court dates — or if they prefer that lawmakers build new jail facilities and hire more staff in the coming years, accommodating growing numbers of inmates and the expanding population of Atlanta, and ensuring criminals are not on the streets.
We find that two-thirds (66%) of Atlanta voters, including 79% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and a quarter of Republicans, prefer that lawmakers make immediate changes to the policies that cause overcrowding rather than expand these same carceral systems over the next few years.
Our findings make it clear: Atlanta voters want to vote to decide the fate of Cop City and would vote to repeal the construction of it, and oppose expanding the local carceral system. Furthermore, a strong majority of Atlanta voters agree that overcrowding and deaths in jail custody should be addressed by community support, affordable bonds, and reasonable releases, rather than building a new jail and hiring more jail staff. Lastly, this survey reveals that portions of the city’s electorate suspect that the First Amendment rights of protestors demonstrating against Cop City have been violated.
Anika Dandekar (@AnikaDandekar) is a senior analyst at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From September 15 to 18, 2023, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 454 likely voters in Atlanta, Georgia, using SMS and web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±5 percentage points.