This weekend, CBS News and YouGov released a poll which concluded that “Three in four Americans think the jury reached the right verdict in which former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd, a majority view that spans across all racial, age and partisan groups.”
Buried towards the end of the post, CBS News included the results to the question of how well of a “job your local police are doing.”
According to the poll, 70% of black Americans say their local police are doing a “very good” or “somewhat good” job.
“On balance, Black Americans rate their local police more positively than negatively, but they (17%) are less likely than Whites (39%) to say their local police are doing a ‘very good’ job in their community,” CBS News added.
Skimming this data, it appears that there is a drastic difference when it comes to support for police by race. However, notice that the “good” categories are individually specified — “very good” and “somewhat good” — while the “bad” categories are grouped together — “somewhat/very bad.”
Why did they do this? Arguably, to try and insinuate a far greater racial divide on the subject of support for local police than the one that actually exists.
A brief scan of the first row of the table provided will show “33 percent, 39 percent, 17 percent” for total/white/black respondents. Based on the large difference between 39 percent and 17 percent, one could understandably conclude that support for local police is lacking in black communities.
The second line, though, shows that black Americans are more likely than white Americans to think that their local police are doing a “somewhat good” job.
Next, CBS have arguably padded their “good versus bad” presentation by combining “somewhat bad” and “very bad” into “somewhat/very bad,” while not doing the same for “very good” and “somewhat good.”
Using the original data, if we separate “somewhat bad” and “very bad,” for example, we see that 11 percent of white Americans think their local police are doing a “somewhat bad” job, compared to 19 percent of black Americans and 16 percent of Hispanic Americans. We also see that 7 percent of white Americans think their local police are doing a “very bad” job, compared to 11 percent of black Americans and 6 percent of Hispanic Americans.
This racial divide is far less drastic than the “very good” focus implied.
This becomes even more clear when we group consistently and fairly by “somewhat/very good” and “somewhat/very bad.” By this metric, 82 percent of white Americans think their local police are doing a “good” job, compared to 18 percent who do not. 70 percent of black Americans think their local police are doing a “good” job, compared to 30 percent who do not. 77 percent of Hispanic Americans think their local police are doing a “good” job, compared to 22 percent who do not.
When looking at all poll participants, 79 percent of Americans think their local police are doing a “good job,” while 21 percent do not.
In other words, across all racial categories, the vast majority of Americans believe their local police are doing a good job.
Given that this cuts entirely against the narrative the legacy media wish to promote, is it a surprise that they’re apparently trying to hide this conclusion?
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.