POLL: Most Americans Oppose Removing Statues of Confederate Generals

Richard Moorhead   |  

Jul 22, 2020

A new poll from the Washington Post/ABC reveals that a majority of Americans favor keeping statues honoring Confederate generals in place, with 52% of the public wanting such statues preserved and 43% supporting their removal.

An even wider majority of Americans support preserving statues of U.S. Presidents who owned slaves, such as Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. 68% of Americans want statues of these presidents maintained, while 25% want them removed. The fact that a quarter of Americans want statues of slaveowning Presidents removed is noteworthy in and of itself, considering it would entail removing statues of the United States’ founding fathers and most historic Presidents.

Hispanic Americans appeared to generally agree with White Americans in support of maintaining historic statues, whereas three-quarters of Black Americans support removing Confederate statues from places of public prominence.

The polling data suggests that there’s far less support for Confederate and American statue destruction than the national mob of historic vandals and iconoclasts might think, having attacked numerous well-known monuments and statues to historic Americans across the country. The federal government has only begun to start criminally charging those who attack historic federal property, most recently indicting several people for an attack on an Andrew Jackson statue outside of the White House.

Half of Americans also oppose renaming US military bases named after Confederate generals, with 42% of the public supporting renaming the facilities.

The poll also reveals wide support for the Black Lives Matter movement, with 63% of Americans saying that they support it.

The poll was gauged through phone calls to more than 1,000 Americans across the country.