Death penalty support splits sharply along party, gender, age, and race lines

Evidence

The most striking difference in views on capital punishment is in the partisan political divide on this issue. Republicans favor it highly (81%), whereas Democrats are much less supportive (47%). Over the years about 75% of Republicans regarded the death penalty as morally acceptable, whereas 43% of Democrats did so in a pattern of declining moral acceptability (Jones, 2013). The split in support of the death penalty is much the same across conservative and liberal orientations as it is across political party affiliation. The sociodemographic pattern of support also varies. Men (67%) favor capital punishment more than women (59%), as do older (65%) individuals compared with younger ones (52%). Considerably more Whites (68%) are in favor of executing offenders than are non-Whites (41%) (Saad, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1842

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s existing claims about how social-conservative and authoritarian worldviews cluster with punitive/tough-on-crime attitudes.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1842