Poll: 57 percent of voters support George Floyd protests

A majority of voters said they approve of the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd on May 25, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.

Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in the June 8-11 survey said they approved of the demonstrations, while 43 percent said they disapproved.

Younger voters were more likely than their older counterparts to support the protests.

Seventy-four percent of 18-to-34-year-olds and 61 percent of Americans age 35 to 49 said they approved of the protests, compared with 48 percent of 50-to-64-year-olds and 43 percent of voters 65 and older.

The survey found a wider divide along party lines, with 79 percent of Democrats approving and 65 percent of Republicans disapproving.

Fifty-four percent of independent voters said they approved of the protests.

When it came to race and ethnicity, 84 percent of black voters and 66 percent of Hispanics approved of the protests. White voters were evenly split at 50 percent.

“This is a very diverse moment,” Keisha Blain, an author and history professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told Hill.TV, noting the different backgrounds of those who are participating and supporting the demonstrations.

“They just represent a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and I think that is important and certainly unique, I would say, in this particular moment,” she added.

The protests have sparked calls for racial justice not only in the U.S. but around the world, with demonstrations being held in cities across the globe.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 2,853 registered voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. 

—Gabriela Schulte