Protests and Polarization
How Black Lives Matter Changed Attitudes Toward Police
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6332730 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael W Sances (0000-0003-0013-3738, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Behavior (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0190-9320 • E-ISSN: 1573-6687 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11109-025-10062-2 |
| OpenAlex | W4412013550 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 28 |
How has the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement changed attitudes toward police? Using a novel application of the synthetic control method, I estimate the overall and partisan effects of BLM on aggregate public opinion. Rather than comparing places with more or less BLM activity, I compare confidence in police to confidence in other institutions, and support for police spending to support for other priorities. I find small or non-existent effects for the overall population, substantial negative effects for Democrats, and substantial positive effects for Republicans. Moreover, and despite Democratic politicians’ attempt to distance themselves from the “defund” position, these partisan effects have persisted, with Democratic backlash against police notably larger than Republican increases in support
Polarization (electrochemistry · Political science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
The use of controls in interrupted time series studies of public health interventions
Red States and Black Lives
Using Synthetic Controls
Cluster-robust inference
Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies
The Hollow Hope
Standard Synthetic Control Methods
Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls
Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2000
Agenda Seeding
That Which We Call Welfare by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter an Analysis of the Impact of Question Wording on Response Patterns
The Persistent Effect of U.S. Civil Rights Protests on Political Attitudes
Assessing the Programmatic Equivalence Assumption in Question Wording Experiments
Police Violence and Public Opinion After George Floyd
Race, Prejudice and Support for Racial Justice Countermovements
The Partisans and the Persuadables
Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method
Placebo Tests for Causal Inference
Did Black Lives Matter Protests Change Public Opinion
Five Years after Ferguson
The War at Home
Can Violent Protest Change Local Policy Support? Evidence from the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riot
The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |