A greater percentage of U.S. registered voters believe Confederate statues, which have been targeted by protesters in recent weeks, should remain standing despite activists’ demands to remove them, a Morning Consult poll released this week revealed.
The survey, taken June 6-7, showed that a greater number of Americans believe Confederate statues should remain standing, 44 percent, as opposed to the 32 percent who say they should be removed. Twenty-three percent expressed no opinion on the matter.
The fundings reflect a slight shift in opinion over the last three years. In August 2017, 52 percent of voters indicated that the statues should be left alone, with just over a quarter, 26 percent, indicating otherwise.
However, Morning Consult reported that the purported increase in support over the years is largely driven by Democrats:
The rise in support for removing the statues was driven by Democrats, a majority of whom now take that position, and independents, who still favor keeping those statues standing by a 10-point margin. Eleven percent of GOP voters say the statues should be removed, virtually unchanged since 2017.
The vast majority of Republicans, 71 percent, believe the Confederate statues should remain standing, whereas the majority of Democrats, 53 percent, believe they should be taken down. Forty percent of independents believe they should remain standing, with 30 percent vying for their removal and 30 percent expressing no opinion.
The survey was taken among “roughly” 1,900 voters, with a margin of error of +/- two percent.
The survey comes as protesters vandalize and, in some cases, tear down Confederate statues and others they deem offensive, including statues of Christopher Columbus.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has also embraced the calls for change, requesting in a letter on Wednesday the removal of Confederate statues occupying the U.S. Capitol, or as she called them, “monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end.”
“Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals,” she said in a letter to Committee Chair Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Vice Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.”
Interestingly, Pelosi has remained silent on her own father’s role in the dedication of a Confederate statue in Baltimore’s Wyman Park in 1948.
As Breitbart News detailed:
However, her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., oversaw the dedication of such a statue in Baltimore’s Wyman Park — the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument — as mayor of the city in 1948. At the time, the Speaker’s father said people could look to Jackson’s and Lee’s lives as inspiration and urged Americans to “emulate Jackson’s example and stand like a stone wall against aggression in any form that would seek to destroy the liberty of the world.”
World Wars I and II found the North and South fighting for a common cause, and the generalship and military science displayed by these two great men in the War between the States lived on and were applied in the military plans of our nation in Europe and the Pacific areas,” D’Alesandro said at the dedication ceremony, as detailed by the Baltimore Sun. He continued:
Today with our nation beset by subversive groups and propaganda which seeks to destroy our national unity, we can look for inspiration to the lives of Lee and Jackson to remind us to be resolute and determined in preserving our sacred institutions … remain steadfast in our determination to preserve freedom, not only for ourselves, but for other liberty-loving nations who are striving to preserve their national unity as free nations.
Pelosi’s office did not return Breitbart News’s request for comment.
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