A recent Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab (IPOL) survey conducted by University of Iowa faculty and students between the dates of January 13 and February 3 found that almost half of Iowans support the Black Lives Matter movement while a majority oppose calls to “defund” the police. This opposition dropped dramatically when specific shifts in funding were described in place of a call to “defund” the police. View results and more information about the survey in the documents linked below.
The poll was designed by the Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab, composed of University of Iowa faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. The Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab is co-directed by Profs. Fred Boehmke in Political Science and Kajsa Dalrymple in Journalism and Mass Communication. The poll is a teaching, research, and service project, and was implemented in collaboration with the Iowa Social Science Research Center directed by Frederick J. Boehmke. The University of Iowa Public Policy Center provided support for this poll as part of its PolicyRISE initiative to expand experiential research for University of Iowa students. Current students Noelle Hass, Marissa Good, Stephanie Gutierrez, Amelia Thoreson, and Sam Avery, Research Fellows for the Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab, assisted with the preparation of this release.