52%: No prison time for gross Marine offense
A narrow majority of Americans say four U.S. Marines should not be imprisoned for urinating on the corpses of three Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and shooting video of themselves doing it.
The incident spawned an uproar when the video leaked publicly last week, triggering a criminal investigation by the Pentagon. While the action of the four Marines has been widely condemned, some politicians say it was not a criminal act.
In our national scientific poll, 52% said the four Marines’ punishment should not include imprisonment, 28% said it should include imprisonment, and 20% expressed no opinion.
In the same poll, we also asked Americans whether they believe the commanding officer of those four Marines should face punishment (not necessarily including imprisonment). Fifty-four percent said no, 23% said yes, and 23% said they had no opinion.
Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,179 registered voters nationwide was conducted January 15, 2012 and has a margin of error of ±3%. Poll results are weighted to be a representative sampling of all American adults.
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The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.
Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll:
Poll Position crosstabs – Marines gross offense
Poll Position crosstabs – Marines commanding officer
You can learn more about our polling methodology here.
