New UMass Amherst Poll Finds Just 13% of Republicans Support Juneteenth as a Federal Holiday : UMass Amherst

Black Lives Matter and police reforms

“Reflecting the reality that they bear the brunt of police violence, African Americans are much more supportive of police reforms than are other Americans,” Rhodes says. “But the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged to confront this injustice seems to have had a major impact on public opinion overall. Today, there are cross-racial majorities for significant police reforms, including banning the use of choke holds, prohibiting officers from turning off body cameras, and allowing individuals to sue officers who are accused of misconduct or excessive force. In a nation that has historically put the police on a pedestal, this is a significant shift in the public’s attitudes.”

Ultimately, Nteta concludes that, “In the wake of scandals concerning the financial dealings of leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, President Joe Biden raucously calling for increased funding of the nation’s police departments in his 2022 State of the Union, and the continued disproportionate stoppage, arrest, and killing of African Americans by the nation’s police forces, have led many to declare the Black Lives Matter movement a failed social movement. However, in the eyes of African Americans, the BLM remains a potent political force for change with growing majorities of Blacks supporting both the strategies and tactics (52%) and the goals of the movement (59%). Reports of the death of the BLM in the black community it seems have been greatly exaggerated.”
 

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll of 1,133 respondents nationwide was conducted by YouGov May 31-June 8, 2023. YouGov interviewed 1,298 respondents, including 1,165 main sample respondents, and an oversample of 133 African Americans. The main sample was matched down to a set of 1,000, and then combined with the oversample to form a final dataset of 1,133 respondents. The main sample was matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative “modeled frame” of U.S. adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched main sample and the unmatched oversample were then weighted to their respective frame using propensity scores. The frame used for the oversample is similar to the previously described frame from the main sample, with the main difference being that it includes only African Americans. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. Both propensity score functions included age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and region. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame, and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights for the main sample were then post-stratified on 2020 Presidential vote choice, followed by a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories). Meanwhile, the weights for the oversample were post-stratified on 2020 Presidential vote choice, a three-way stratification between gender, age (4-categories) and education (4-categories), and finally an individual stratification on region.

Then, the matched and weighted main sample and oversample datasets were combined into one. From there, the proportion of African Americans was weighted down to produce the final combined weight. After that, a subset of this combined dataset was taken so that only observations involving African Americans remained. This African American subset of the combined dataset was weighted to the same frame as the oversample using propensity scores. The unmatched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, education and region. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame, and post-stratified according to these deciles. Finally, the weights were then post-stratified on 2020 Presidential vote choice, followed by the same three-way stratification mentioned earlier, in order to produce the final African American weight.

The margin of error within this poll is 3.4%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll