For ‘20: Blaze It

By Sean McElwee, Jon Green, Ethan Winter, and John Ray

Democratic voters overwhelmingly support the legalization of marijuana at the federal level, giving legalization a green light. For ‘20, candidates should be prepared to blaze it.

As part of a recent survey of Democratic likely primary voters and caucus-goers (“Democratic voters” going forward),”[1] Data for Progress and YouGov Blue asked several items about marijuana legalization. One item simply asked about marijuana legalization at the federal level:

Would you [support or oppose] fully legalizing marijuana at the national level? 

A second asked about releasing people convicted of marijuana-related offenses in cases where those convictions were based on laws that would be changed or rolled back by legalization. We asked,

Some people are currently incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses in states where marijuana has since been legalized, and have not been convicted of anything that remains illegal. Do you [support or oppose] releasing these people from prison?

Finally, we asked about a proposal regarding what the government should do with tax revenue it earns from legal marijuana:

In states where marijuana is legal, would you [support or oppose] requiring that any tax revenues collected from its sale be re-invested in communities disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs?

This third item is important because many of the Democratic presidential candidates have noted the need for the government to remunerate the families and communities it has harmed in its pursuit of the “War on Drugs.” In addition to ending the government’s war on small amounts of marijuana possession for personal use, several candidates have proposed that the revenue raised by legalization should be put to use making those families and communities whole. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, recently released a plan to implement this sort of policy at the federal level, which received sustained discussion during the recent debate in South Carolina.

Over the course of this cycle each of the frontrunner presidential candidates has released some form of a plan related to marijuana legalization. Here, we show the importance of these plans: Democratic voters overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana, fixing the justice system to account for legalization, and for granting restitution to the American families and communities harmed by the War on Drugs.

Across the full sample, 80 percent of Democratic voters support federal marijuana legalization, and just 14 percent oppose it. This includes support from both moderate and liberal Democrats.[2] About 69 percent (nice) of self-reported moderate Democrats and 87 percent of Democrats who identify as “liberal” or “very liberal” support legalization.

 
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Similarly, voters clearly support overturning marijuana convictions for behavior that is no longer illegal due to changes in state laws. Fully 90 percent of Democrats, including 82 percent of moderates and 94 percent of liberal/very liberal voters, agree. In each case, a negligible share of voters oppose revisiting sentences for crimes that would be eliminated by legalization.

Elsewhere, Data for Progress has conducted extensive polling on matters of criminal justice and found voters clearly support commonsense reforms to the existing system. Changing or clearing sentences for crimes that would be eliminated by legalization is just one approach to rolling back the War on Drugs for which Data for Progress has found clear voter support.

 
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That said, we find slightly less support among likely Democratic primary voters for investing tax revenue from legal marijuana back into communities affected by the War on Drugs, though the proposal still garners support from a clear majority of respondents. About 71 percent of likely Democratic primary voters support community reinvestments, but 17 percent report that they are unsure how they feel. The ideological gap on this item is slightly smaller than on others, with 65 percent of moderates and 75 percent of liberal or very liberal respondents reporting they support community reinvestments.

While opposition to this item is slightly higher than others, it is clear that differences in support for community reinvestment and the other marijuana policies we asked about stems from higher shares of uncertainty. Just under 1 in 5 voters are unsure how they feel about this policy, compared to just 5 percent overall on marijuana amnesty and 7 percent on legalization. Democratic primary voters actively oppose these proposals at similarly low rates.

 
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White voters are the most supportive of marijuana legalization. About 85 percent of white voters support legalizing marijuana at the federal level, compared to about 69 percent of Latinos and 67 percent of Black voters. About 1 in 5 Black and Latino Democratic voters oppose legalization.

The difference in levels of support for legalization between Latino and Black voters is not statistically distinguishable, but both are statistically lower than the level of support for the policy expressed by white voters. In other criminal justice areas, Data for Progress has not found as much of a racial divide within Democrats, who are typically more uniform on questions of criminal justice reform along this dimension.

 
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We find a much smaller divide on the question of overturning marijuana convictions. About 85 percent of Black voters, 82 percent of Latino voters, and 92 percent of white voters support such a policy. In each case, the share of voters who oppose overturning marijuana convictions is negligible.

This is more in line with other polling Data for Progress has done on matters of criminal justice reform, where we do not observe any particular divides by race after controlling for party identification and other factors. Even accounting for differences by race, it is clear voters support overturning marijuana convictions. Considering most voters already said they did not believe that marijuana possession should be a crime, this is not surprising.

 
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That said, we find white voters are slightly less supportive of investing revenue in communities affected by the War on Drugs. About 73 percent of Black voters, 77 percent of Latino voters, and 69 percent of white voters support such an investment. The difference between Black and white voters does not achieve conventional levels of statistical significance, but the difference between whites and Latinos does.

White people are disproportionately shielded War on Drugs and so it is unsurprising to see slightly lower levels of support for economic justice. That said, support for investing marijuana revenue in communities affected by the War on Drugs is high and positive across these groups of voters. In each case, the share of voters who report they are unsure is higher than the share who oppose this policy.

 
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Controlling for other factors, the ideological gulf is larger for Latino voters than it is for other groups. Among Black voters, 61 percent of self-reported moderates support legalization, compared to 76 percent of liberal or very liberal voters who support legalization, or a 15-point gap. That gap is about 16 points among white voters. Among Latinos, that gap is 26 points.

Among Black voters, that gap is driven by a higher share of self-reported ideological moderates reporting they are unsure how they feel about legalization, while among other groups, moderates are more likely to oppose legalization. About 28 percent of Latino moderates oppose legalization versus just 13 percent of Latino liberal/very liberal voters who oppose it -- a 15-point gap, larger than the 1-point gap in opposition among Black liberals and moderates, and the 12-point gap in opposition among white liberals and moderates.

 
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Within race, we observe a negative relationship between voters’ income and support for marijuana legalization among Latino and white voters, but not among Black voters. Wealthier whites and Latinos are more supportive of the policy than are voters earning under $30,000 per year in each of those groups, though it is worth noting that strong support is higher among lower-income white Democratic voters than their higher-income counterparts. Among Latino voters, that difference is driven by more low-income voters reporting they’re unsure how they feel about legalization.

However, those differences are driven by very high levels of support for legalization among the very wealthiest voters, those earning over $100,000 per year. There are no significant differences across subgroups within voters earning less than $100,000 per year. On net, support for legalization is clearly positive across each of these subgroups.

 
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Notably, support for federal marijuana legalization is particularly high among those who feel disaffected from their political party. Later in the survey, we asked voters, 

How important is being [a Democrat for Democrats/an Independent for Independents/a Republican for Republicans] to your personal identity?

 <1> Very important

 <2> Somewhat important

 <3> Not very important

 <4> Not at all important

As this survey concerned likely Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers, the vast majority were Democratic (76 percent), just over 23 percent were Independent, and less than 1 percent were Republicans who reported they lived in a state that permitted cross-party voting and that they would vote in their state’s Democratic primary.

Additionally, as this survey concerned those likeliest to vote, it is probably not surprising to hear that about 42 percent of respondents reported their party ID was “very important” to them, compared to just 6 percent who said it wasn’t at all.

But among that disaffected 6 percent, support for marijuana legalization is particularly high. About 89 percent of those disaffected from their party report they support legalization, compared to 80 percent of the sample overall.

 
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This may seem like a small quantity -- 89 percent of 6 percent of the total being just over 5 percent of the total, after all! -- but elsewhere, Data for Progress has found that a marijuana legalization policy plays an important role in reducing third party voting. In 2020, six percent of a party’s supporters will likely make or break the next President. Marijuana legalization is particularly popular among Democrats, and even more so among the small subset most at risk of not voting or voting for another party in 2020.


Authorship and Methodology 

Sean McElwee @SeanMcElwee is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Data for Progress.

Jon Green is @_Jon_Green a co-founder of Data for Progress.

Ethan Winter @EthanBWinter is a senior advisor to Data for Progress. 

John Ray @johnlray is a senior political analyst at YouGov Blue.

This survey was conducted in two waves. The first included 2,953 interviews conducted from June 24th to July 2nd, 2019 by YouGov on the internet of registered voters likely to vote in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020. A sample of 6,116 interviews of self-identified registered voters was selected to be representative of registered voters and weighted according to gender, age, race, education, region, and past presidential vote based on registered voters in the November 2016 Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The sample was then subsetted to only look at respondents who reported they were likely to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucuses. The weights range from 0.2 to 6.4 with a mean of 1 and a standard deviation of 0.5.

The second wave included 1,619 interviews based on recontacting respondents participating in the first wave (a 55% recontact rate). Respondents participated from January 18th to January 27th, 2020. This sample was weighted on gender, age, race, education, region, and past presidential vote to the weighted sample proportions from the first wave. The weights range from 0.5 to 4.5 with a mean of 1 and a standard deviation of 0.4.

For rounding purposes, all results conveyed in the charts sum to 100 percentage points and thus may deviate slightly from crosstab data.

[1] Here, we present topline summaries of demographic subgroups of interest whose relative support and opposition levels are statistically significant in more sophisticated statistical models that include controls for other demographic and political factors. We focus on the overall numeric quantities for simplicity.

[2] As only 4 percent of likely Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers identify as “conservative” or “very conservative,” we disregard them from the analysis here.