Redefining Justice: The Partisan Transformation of Capital Punishment

While survey research indicates a broad decline in support for the death penalty in the United States in recent decades, divergent trends emerge when responses are categorized by race and party identification. Previous research has traced the language and rhetoric of the major parties’ messaging on capital punishment, noting a positive shift among Republicans and a negative shift among Democrats which began to show themselves in the Clinton era and became more apparent after the turn of the century. This paper integrates linear regression analysis of data from the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey to compare changes in party messaging with fluctuations in public opinion on the death penalty from 1972 to 2022. Following the structure of John Zaller’s conception of public opinion as driven by elite messaging, I will find that through the past five decades, the death penalty transformed from an issue on which opinions were divided primarily along racial lines to one divided along party lines. These findings indicate that through strategic messaging, party leaders can alter the symbolic meaning that voters associate with hot-button issues to the extent that individuals on each side of the political spectrum debate these issues on entirely different terms.