Abortion and civil rights among issues pushing Americans to protest: poll

More than 2,000 people have been arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses since April 18, but few Americans are willing to do the same, a new exclusive poll finds.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that a small percentage of Americans are willing to protest foreign conflicts, even if it means arrest.

But what about issues not related to foreign conflicts? What debates or controversies might Americans be arrested for in a divided country? Voters surveyed by USA TODAY and Suffolk were evenly split on whether they would risk arrest over a political issue, with 48% answering “yes” and 48% saying “no.”

The nationwide survey of 1,000 people was conducted on landlines and cell phones last Tuesday through Friday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Here are three results from the survey.

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Would Americans risk arrest over the war between Israel and Hamas in Ukraine?

When poll respondents were asked what issues would motivate them to protest – even if it meant risking arrest – only 3.7% said they were still concerned about the Israel-Hamas war or the Russian invasion of Ukraine would demonstrate.

But many Americans still support the college students and other activists arrested in recent weeks amid widespread pro-Palestinian protests. After weeks of students staking out camps on college campuses, 18.6% of Americans said they support the protests and 23.9% said they support their demands but disapprove of the protesters’ behavior, according to the poll resulted.

While 45.8% said they strongly oppose the pro-Palestinian protests, some believe the students arrested on campuses across the country have been deprived of their First Amendment rights. Brett Watchorn, 36, an independent shipping merchant from Denver, called the arrests “disgusting.”

“I’m worried about the students,” Watchorn said. “If I were their age, I would be on the picket line with them.”

More:Biden vs. Trump in college protests: What their conflicting messages say about the 2024 election

Protests against abortion rights

About 8.3% said women’s rights and abortion rights would motivate them to protest even if they were arrested. This was the topic most commonly mentioned by survey participants when asked what they would be willing to demonstrate about.

One of those survey respondents, Natalie Johnson, a 60-year-old retired teacher from Brooklyn, New York, said she believes abortion rights should not be legislated.

“What happens to my body happens to my body, you can’t generalize that. Therefore, it does not seem right to me to put it under the law. Everyone is different,” said Johnson, a Democrat who plans to vote for Biden in the general election. “Everyone experiences something different. And it should be my decision. It’s my body.”

Abortion rights will take center stage in the 2024 election after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Roe v. Wade picked up. The court’s decision gave states the power to regulate the procedure, reversing decades of national abortion protections.

Former President Donald Trump said he believes states should enforce their own abortion restrictions, while President Joe Biden has pushed for restoring abortion rights guaranteed by Roe.

USA TODAY and Suffolk found that only 2.5% of voters surveyed would protest because they oppose expanding abortion rights.

Civil rights, immigration and other issues

The only other issue that more than 5% of survey respondents said would motivate them to protest were issues surrounding civil rights, police brutality and Black Lives Matter. The findings come after civil rights protests erupted across the country in 2020 in response to the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by police.

All other issues listed in the survey where Americans said they would risk being arrested were chosen by fewer than 5%.

For example, only 2.5% of respondents chose immigration policy as an issue that would motivate them to demonstrate, even though it sparked heated debate on both sides of the aisle as encounters with migrants along the Southwest border reached an all-time high last year.

The threat to democracy that both former Trump and Biden have claimed is at stake in this election is also not an issue that most registered voters would rally around (only 2.2% of respondents chose it). Option).

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