Police Violence and Public Opinion After George Floyd: How the Black Lives Matter Movement and Endorsements Affect Support for Reforms

• Author: Scott A. MacKenzie,Cheryl Boudreau,Daniel J. Simmons
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221081007

Mini-Symposium: America in the 2020 Elections

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(2) 497–511

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221081007

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Police Violence and Public Opinion After

George Floyd: How the Black Lives Matter

Movement and Endorsements Affect

Support for Reforms

Cheryl Boudreau

1

, Scott A. MacKenzie

1

, and Daniel J. Simmons

2



Abstract

What factors shape public opinion about government solutions to address police violence? We address this quest ion by

conducting a survey in which respondents express their opinions about actual proposals to reform police practices.

Within the survey, we randomly assign respondents to receive the positions of traditional advocates (Black lawmakers)

and/or opponents (law enforcement) of police reform efforts. Our results reveal broad bipartisan support for the

proposals, but that information about groups that support or oppose these proposals polarizes partisans’opinions.

However, Democrats and even Republicans who support Black Lives Matter (BLM) express high levels of support for the

proposals regardless of the information they receive. These results suggest that partisanship in the mass public is not

necessarily a barrier to police reform efforts. A bipartisan majority of the public supports meaningful reforms, and any

polarizing effects of elite signals are muted by Democrats’and Republicans’support for BLM.

Keywords

police violence, Black Lives Matter, endorsements, public opinion, partisanship, polarization

In recent years, episodes of police violence involving

unarmed Black men—Michael Brown’s death during an

altercation with a white police officer in Ferguson (2014),

Freddie Gray’s death while in the custody of the Baltimore

Police Department (2015), the fatal shooting of Stephon

Clark in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento

(2018)—have captured the attention of public officials

and ordinary citizens alike. Each of these episodes fol-

lowed a disturbingly familiar timeline: immediate con-

demnation followed by widespread protests bordering on

unrest, internal investigations resulting in none of the

police officers involved being charged and convicted, and

diminished hopes for meaningful changes to police per-

sonnel and practices as opponents of reform dug in and

public attention turned elsewhere. In late May 2020, as

video of the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black

man, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin while

three seemingly indifferent colleagues looked on went

viral, scholars and practitioners were already asking

whether this episode would be different.

Just over one year later, some things look different.

What began as local protests near the scene of Floyd’s

death mushroomed into a mass movement with tens of

millions of Americans taking to the streets in thousands of

cities and towns during a pandemic. Led by the Black

Lives Matter movement, these marches for justice at-

tracted unusual allies, including Republican senator and

2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and police

chiefs and uniformed officers in Flint, Camden, Sacra-

mento, and many other places. Chauvin and the other

three officers were fired by the Minneapolis Police De-

partment. All four were arrested, and Chauvin was con-

victed of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 22.5 years in

prison. The other three officers currently await trial. In

Minneapolis and other cities, local officials are

1

Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, CA,

USA

2

Department of Political Science, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester,

VT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Cheryl Boudreau, Department of Political Science, University of

California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

Email: clboudreau@ucdavis.edu