Death penalty support hits 55-year low: poll

• So far, 35 executions have been conducted in 2026, and 47 were carried out in 2025 — up nearly double from 25 the year prior and 24 in 2023.

State of play: But Americans are growing wary of the death penalty: Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers, while 45% are opposed, according to Gallup's October polling of 1,200 U.S. adults.

• Americans' support for the death penalty has fluctuated over time, once peaking at 80% in 1994 and gradually slipping from there.

• The last time support fell lower than where it is now was in 1966, when a record-low 42% favored the death penalty.

Younger respondents, those ages 18 to 34, were far less likely to support capital punishment than their older peers in the most recent survey.

• Fifty-seven percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they were not in favor of the death penalty, compared to 41% of those in the 35-54 age range and 42% of those 55 and older.
• Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to oppose the death penalty, with just 28% of those on the left in favor compared to 73% on the right. But Gallup notes that all party groups are less likely to favor the death penalty now than they were in the '90s and 2000s.

Worth noting: Gallup started its most recent polling on the question a day after death row inmate Christa Pike survived a botched lethal injection process in Tennessee, triggering a pause on executions in the state.

• Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was sent to a local hospital for life-saving care and has since returned to prison.

Friction point: The incident put state execution protocols under new scrutiny as it played out alongside another death-penalty-related controversy: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's since-scratched idea for a livestreamed execution by firing squad.

• The plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan was widely unpopular — though a slim majority of U.S. adults still supported him being put to death, according to an October survey from The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos.
• Several executions, Hasan's included, are scheduled to be carried out before the end of the year.

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) notes that given the long waiting period after a death sentence is handed down, the number of executions in a year does not necessarily reflect the public mood on capital punishment.

• The number of death sentences handed down has fallen over the last 25 years.

The bottom line: Gallup predicts that if younger Americans remain against the death penalty, support could decline further.

Go deeper: Trump expresses doubts about livestreaming execution