Support for anti-police protests and the Black Lives Matter movement dropped precipitously among Wisconsin residents between mid-June and early August, a new poll …
Support for anti-police protests and the Black Lives Matter movement dropped precipitously among Wisconsin residents between mid-June and early August, a new poll finds, offering electoral alarm bells for Democrats who have defended or downplayed rioting and violence associated with them. Mass protests that began in the wake of George Floyd’s killing commanded a net 25 percentage-point approval in the third week of June, the Marquette Law School Poll found at the time. But by the first week of August, respondents to the same poll were evenly divided, with equal numbers supporting and opposing the protests—a 25 point drop in net approval. The Black Lives Matter movement similarly lost 20 percentage points of support, dropping from a net approval of 32 percent to 12 percent. By contrast, Wisconsinites grew more supportive of the police, whose net approval rose from 54 percent to 63 percent. All of these findings predate the past week’s chaos in Kenosha, Wis., as the police shooting of Jacob Blake led to protests, riots, looting, and the shooting of two people by a 17-year-old from Illinois. Those events have caused Kenosha residents to sour further on the protests, the New York Times reported, and pushed them toward supporting President Donald Trump.
