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Posted on 07/17/2013 12:04:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Significant, not only because it’s the first major poll of public opinion about the verdict but because Holder will think twice about bringing federal charges if he believes it’s a sure political loser for his boss.
We’ll need more polls before drawing hard conclusions but here’s data point number one:
Reactions to the jury decision in the shooting of Trayvon Martin vary sharply along racial lines.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of American Adults agree with the jury’s verdict that Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman is not guilty of murder in the shooting death of the black teenager. Thirty-four percent (34%) disagree with the Florida jury’s verdict. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure.
I have the crosstabs in front of me but they’re reg-walled for subscribers only, so I’ll give you the broad outline without providing actual numbers. The white/black split on the verdict is what you’d expect, as is the fact that men are much more likely to agree with the outcome than women are. One big question mark is how Latinos feel about it; Rasmussen didn’t list them as a separate racial demographic in the poll, choosing to include everyone who’s neither white nor black in the “other” category, but “other” ended up agreeing with the verdict almost (but not quite) to the same extent as the public generally did. Politico marveled last night that not once during four separate interviews yesterday with Univision and Telemundo did Obama get a question about the Zimmerman verdict, even though the White House issued a statement about it on Sunday and the DOJ is supposedly seriously considering filing federal charges. Not one question. Said one TV executive: “It’s unbelievable that any journalist with access to the President this week wouldn’t ask the first African-American president about his reaction to the verdict.” Indeed it is, but it makes sense if you assume that it’s not so much an oversight as a deliberate omission. Spanish-language media and Obama are united in wanting comprehensive immigration reform; the whole point of the interviews was to give O a pipeline to Latino voters in order to put pressure on the GOP. If, as Rasmussen’s numbers suggest (but don’t prove), Latinos lean toward thinking that Zimmerman deserved to be acquitted, then both O and his partners at Univision and Telemundo would want to stay away from this subject lest it complicate the White House’s PR initiative.
Rasmussen also asked people what they thought of media coverage of the trial, but those results are hard to parse. Only a few people think it was “excellent,” but the spread among “good,” “fair,” and “poor” isn’t wide. And of course, “poor” can include people from both ends of the spectrum, those who think the coverage was unfair to Zimmerman and those who think it was, surreally, biased in his favor. There isn’t a wide racial gap here, in fact; the big gap, oddly, comes among men under 40 and women under 40. The former thought the coverage was quite good. The latter didn’t. Huh. Maybe that’s just a fluke from a small subsample.
Speaking of sample splits, read this. I wasn’t the only one, apparently, who thought juror B37 was surprisingly pro-Zimmerman in her interview with CNN.
The beauty of representative republic based on constitutional law is that the ‘public’ does not always
have to agree with results.
While encouraging, we can’t subject the determination of guilt or innocence to public polling.
Yep, 67% according to several polls were against Obamacare when it was voted on, that's the 'beauty', ain't it?!
“because Holder will think twice about bringing federal charges if he believes it’s a sure political loser for his boss.”
Holder and his boss have already thought this through. The object is not justice in any form. It is to cause more racial division. When the whites start to fight back, the goal will have been accomplished.
and that’s with half the population believing that zimmerman just walked up and shot the kid in broad daylight for no reason.
NCLR announced yesterday that it had joined the NAACP, National Urban League (NUL), National Action Network (NAN) and other civil rights organizations in asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to meet and discuss possible next steps to be taken by the U.S. Department of Justice following the verdict in the Zimmerman trial.
Free stuff (mostly from whitey) uber alles.
It is then up to the electorate to resolve the act through their representatives if so many are against it. You can’t have it both ways - you should know this.
It is either based on law or mob rule. Snarky doesn’t have anything to do with it.
In all of the online polls I have seen, the percentage who agreed ranged from 60 to 78% so this seems very low to me.
Since the electorate could not “resolve the act” before and while it was voted on, how can it resolve if AFTER it was voted on? Who did the representatives represent if 67% of their constituents were against it, the mob, as you call it? Vicious circle and a major flaw that those in love with their perceived perfection of the representative republic refuse to acknowledge.
i agree but i dont think that is the point of the poll. to me it is instructive because it shows the gap between the media’s view on the trial and the public’s view. if you watch the news you would think the world is unanimous in its criticism of the zimmerna jury when in fact it is a minority opinion. same with politicians. they act like its simply inconceivable that zimmerman is innocent. thats why polls like this are useful.
What is a near-majority, is that like being slightly
pregnant?
You’ve created a false equivalency. A court of laws is supposed to apply the law, regardless of what the mob says. Health care policy is within the purview of the mob.
18% undecided huh? Well, let’s PRETEND that they split 50-50 in the “lean” category...which is crap, I bet they lean heavily to AGREE with the verdict, but are afraid to say...now you have 57% agree with the verdict.
The media sucks. They focus on the screaming ninnies of the BGI, and ignore most everyone else.
I’m listening to Jaun Williams argue that Trayvon Martin isn’t responsible for his own death. Never mind that Trayvon jumped out of the bushes to start beating on George. Never mind that he was bigger than George, or that George feared he might be knocked out, thus arming his attacker. George was to take his beating like a white man, even though he isn’t. How is Trayvon not responsible for his own death? The moment Trayvon attacked and battered an armed man he committed suicide. I bet if Juan were being battered on the ground he would do the same, if he were armed, or he would die. George acted responsibly. How many would have died by now had Trayvon been allowed to kill George and take his firearm? My guess is that the witness would have been the next to die. I can’t believe the self-inflicted ignorance, even from a halfwit like Juan.
Yeah. Okay. You’re old enough to know what’s going on here.
That’s because online are not scientific but I do think the 18% undecided or unsure could probably be split to 11% agree and 9% do not agree, making it to 59% agree and 43% don’t, and that’s being generous to the ‘do not agree’ people.
I think the more people learn about the case the more people will shift to the ‘agree’ with verdict column.
Absolutely, but we already knew the media only speaks for the far left in this country and minorites(same thing). The MSM will always only represent 30 to 35 percent of the populous.
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