<P> Gallup, Inc. monitors support for the death penalty in the United States since 1937 by asking "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" Gallup surveys document a sharp increase in support for capital punishment between 1966 and 1994 clearly in response to rising violent crime rates during this period (e.g. Page and Shapiro 1992 .) However, with the dramatic surge in arguments questioning the fairness of the sentence (due, in part, to DNA exonerations of death row inmates in the national media in the late 1990s (Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun 2004 The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence), support then began to wane, falling from 80% in 1994 to 66% in 2000 . Moreover, approval varies substantially depending on the characteristics of the target and the alternatives posed, with much lower support for putting juveniles and the mentally ill to death (26% and 19%, respectively, in 2002) and for the alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (52% in 2003) Gallup 2005). Given the fact that attitudes toward this policy are often responsive to events, to characteristics of the target, and to alternatives, the conventional wisdom--that death penalty attitudes are impervious to change--is surely overstated . Accordingly, any analysis of death penalty attitudes must account for the responsiveness of such attitudes, as well as their reputed resistance to change </P> <P> In the October 2016 Gallup poll, 60% of respondents said they were in favor and 37% were opposed . </P> <P> Pew Research polls have demonstrated declining American support for the death penalty: 80% in 1974, 78% in 1996, 55% in 2014, and 49% in 2016 . The 2014 poll showed significant differences by race: 63% of whites, 40% of Hispanics, and 36% of blacks, respectively, supported the death penalty in that year . </P> <P> A 2010 poll found that 61% of voters would choose a penalty other than the death sentence for murder . When persons surveyed are given a choice between the death penalty and life without parole for persons convicted of capital crimes, support for execution has traditionally been significantly lower than in polling that asks only if a person does or does not support the death penalty . In 2010, for instance, a Gallup poll that offered a choice showed 49% favoring the death penalty, and 46% favoring life imprisonment . </P>

States with death penalty in the united states