Elon Poll: Majority Wants Confederate Monuments To Remain In Place

A new poll from Elon University finds most people surveyed want to keep Confederate monuments in public spaces. 

Two-thirds of respondents said that the monuments and statues should remain in public places such as parks, city squares, and courthouses, while 35 percent said they should be moved.

77 percent of whites responded that they should stay compared to 27 percent of African Americans.

The poll also asked about what individuals believed to be the main cause of the Civil War. Jason Husser, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Elon University Poll, says the answer was pretty much split between states' rights and slavery. 

“Those who think the Civil War was about slavery tended to say that monuments glorified what the Confederacy fought for, which in their words was slavery," he says. "Those who said that the Civil War was about states' rights tended to talk about monuments in terms of helping people to understand history or honoring Confederates who died.”

The online poll was taken by nearly 1,500 people and was conducted in early November.