As protests continue to take place around the country following the murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis Police Department, a Pew Research Center analysis finds that two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of adults across racial and ethnic groups, express support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
A companion analysis finds that Americans’ attention to news coverage of the protests has been nearly as high as recent attention to news about the COVID-19 outbreak.
According to Pew, some 42% of respondents follow the protests “very closely.”
And, while the majority of Americans hold positive views of the demonstrations tied to Floyd’s death, the twin analyses find “deep partisan divides” — including over views of the factors underlying the protests and assessments of both the quality of the news media’s coverage and Trump’s messaging about the demonstrations.
The survey of 9,654 U.S. adults, conducted June 4-10 as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project, finds that the public sees a mix of factors as contributing to the protests, with seven-in-ten U.S. adults saying anger over Floyd’s death after his arrest by Minneapolis police has contributed a great deal to the protests.
Some 69% of the respondents point to broader tensions between blacks and police.
The public’s views of the amount of coverage news organizations have devoted to six specific protest-related storylines also varies. For example, a plurality of 44% of Americans say too much news coverage has been focused on acts of violence around the protests (as opposed to too little or the right amount) while 51% say too little coverage has focused on nonviolent protests.
Among the key findings of the report:
| • | Republicans and Democrats have vastly different views on the factors underlying the protests: While 84% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic say long-standing concerns about treatment of black people in this country have contributed a great deal to the protests, only 45% of Republicans agree. Eight-in-ten Democrats say tensions between black people and police was a major contributing factor, while 57% of Republicans say the same. |
| • | The public sees working with black people in their local communities as more effective than protests and other tactics for achieving racial equality. Overall, majorities of Americans see working directly with black people to solve problems in their local communities (82%), bringing people of different racial backgrounds together to talk about race (74%), and working to get more black people elected to office (68%) as effective tactics for groups and organizations that work to help black people achieve equality. Smaller shares – though still more than half (55%) – believe organizing protests and rallies is an effective tool. |
| • | About seven-in-ten Americans, including majorities across racial and ethnic groups, say they’ve had conversations about race in the past month. Additionally, 37% of those who use social networking sites say they have posted or shared content related to race or racial equality on these sites during this period. |
| • | Deep racial divides persist in views of President Donald Trump’s impact on race relations in the U.S. About half of respondents (48%) say the president has made race relations worse, a number that’s higher among black (68%), Asian (62%) and Hispanic (55%) adults. Roughly one-in-five adults (19%) say Trump has made progress toward improving race relations, with only 5% of black adults, 11% of Hispanic adults and 14% of Asian adults agreeing with this assessment. |
| • | Republicans and Democrats differ widely in their views on the impact Trump has had on race relations. Fully four-in-ten Republicans say Trump has made things better, while only 13% say he has made things worse. About a third of Republicans (32%) say Trump has tried but failed to make progress, and 13% say he hasn’t addressed the issue. By contrast, 80% of Democrats say Trump has made race relations worse, only 2% say he’s made things better, 8% say he’s tried and failed and 10% say he hasn’t addressed the issue. |
To read the report in full, click here:
https://www.pewsocialtrends.
