New polling suggests now declining support for legalization of marijuana

As highlighted in this Washington Post Wonkblog piece, headlined “Survey: Support for legal weed drops 7 points in the past year,” a few recent polls suggest a reversal of recent trends of growing support for marijuana legalization. Here are excerpts from the report (with key links preserved, and my emphasis added):

National support for legalized marijuana has slipped by seven percentage points in the past year, from 51 percent in 2013 to 44 percent today, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.  PRRI asked 4,500 Americans about the intensity of their support for or opposition to legalizing marijuana.  The year-over-year drop in overall support was concentrated among those who favored marijuana legalization last year, but not strongly.  Opposition increased greatest among those who strongly opposed legal marijuana.

These numbers suggest that people who only slightly supported legalization last year have changed their minds, and that people who slightly opposed legalization now feel more strongly about it….

An October 2013 Gallup poll found strong support for marijuana legalization nationally, with 58 percent in favor and 39 percent opposed.  The PRRI and Gallup numbers are not directly comparable, since the questions were worded differently in each survey.  Moreover, survey responses on marijuana legalization tend to be highly sensitive to particular question wording.

Still, the year-over-year drop within this one poll is significant and well outside the poll’s 1.8 point margin of error.  If other surveys show similar findings, it could mean that Americans generally don’t like the news coming out of Colorado and Washington – even if that news has been largely positive.

I have emphasized an important line in this discussion of this latest poll data because I think all polling on marijuana reform can be subject to a lot of varied responses among a significant number of folks who are not strongly for or strongly against reform in principle.  Thus, I tend to view polling on specific ballot proposals in specific states as more important than broad national polls on these matters.  But every bit for data about public opinion on this fast-evolving issue is still notable and potentially consequential.