Most Voters Think a Police Officer Murdered George Floyd
By Ethan Winter
Data for Progress ran a survey from May 31 through June 1, testing the electorate’s understanding of the police’s murder of George Floyd as well as the protests resulting from that murder.
In our first question, we asked likely voters what came closer to their view, providing them three response options: 1) that a police officer murdered Floyd, 2) that Floyd died in part due to excessive force but that it was not a murder, or 3) that it was a tragic accident.
Overall, we found that 65 percent of likely voters believe that a police officer murdered George Floyd. Twenty-five percent think that Floyd’s death was in part due to excessive force but also wasn’t a murder, while only 10 percent of voters would describe Floyd’s death as a “tragic accident.” Sixty-nine percent of black voters, 64 percent of Latino voters, and 65 percent of white voters all think that a police officer murdered Floyd. Similarly, majorities of both self-identifying Democrats (75 percent) and Republicans (55 percent) think that a police officer murdered Floyd.
Next, we asked about likely voters’ attitudes toward the protests resulting from George Floyd’s death. The three response options we provided are: 1) these sorts of protests will continue until long-term solutions are found, 2) the priority should be ending these protests and violence, or 3) they weren’t sure.
We found that a plurality (49 percent) of voters think these sorts of protests will continue until the protests’ root cause is addressed. Meanwhile, 37 percent of voters think the immediate priority should be ending the protests and violence, meaning more police and National Guard should be deployed. The remaining 14 percent weren’t sure.
A majority of both black and Latin voters (53 percent for each) think that these sorts of protests will continue and that long-term solutions to poverty and violence are needed. Similarly, a plurality of white voters (49 percent) thought that long-term solutions to poverty and violence are required.
We observe a degree of partisan sorting on this question: 64 percent of Democrats think we need long-term solutions, while 53 percent of Republicans think that we should prioritize ending the protests through further deployments of police and National Guard.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is an analyst at Data for Progress. You can email him at ethan@dataforprogress.org
Edited by Andrew Mangan, Senior Editor, Data for Progress
From May 31 through June 1, 2020, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,409 likely voters nationally, using web-panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ± 2.6 percentage points.
Question Wording
On May 25, 2020, an unarmed black man named George Floyd died while in police custody in Minneapolis. An officer knelt on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds before he died. Which of the following comes closer to your view:
George Floyd was murdered by a police officer
George Floyd's death was in part from excessive use of force but not murder
George Floyd's death was a tragic accident
Which comes closer to your view on recent protests:
These sorts of protests will continue unless we solve the root cause of the problem. We need long-term solutions to poverty and violence.
The first priority is ending the protests and violence, which means we need more police officers and national guard to calm the situation down
Don't know