As the Trump administration and some states seek to expand the application of the death penalty, about two-thirds of Americans (66%) now favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while nearly a third (32%) oppose it.
Overall, support for the death penalty is 6 percentage points higher than it was five years ago, in April 2021 – though it is roughly equal to where it was in August of 2020 (65%).
The new Pew Research Center surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults conducted July 6-12, 2026. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel. The survey represents the views of the full U.S. adult population. Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed responses and the survey methodology.