From today’s Washington Post:

A large majority of Americans support the death penalty for the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing should he be convicted in federal court, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Overall, 70 percent of those surveyed say they support the death penalty for 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. While most Democrats and Republicans alike say they would support the death penalty for Tsarnaev, there are deep racial divisions on the matter, reflecting a common gap in public views of the death penalty itself.

And from a Gallup press release on January 9th:

Americans’ support for the death penalty as punishment for murder has plateaued in the low 60s in recent years, after several years in which support was diminishing. Sixty-three percent now favor the death penalty as the punishment for murder, similar to 61% in 2011 and 64% in 2010.

So 63% support for the death penalty, but 70% if it’s Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Assuming that the national sentiment on the death penalty hasn’t substantively changed since January, this means that 7% of Americans allow their feelings to be changed by a massive police overreaction and overblown media coverage of an attack that took fewer lives than your run-of-the-mill school shooting.

It makes you wonder how many more of us are so easily manipulated on issues other than the death penalty as well. And it certainly helps explain the need for critics like Glenn Greenwald.

On the other hand, this may just be an extension of the futility of poll-watching, as is hopefully evidenced by a recent survey which found that 42% of Americans didn’t know Obamacare was still in effect.

Note to future self: write post about the nonsensicality of polling (replete with a brief digression in which I nevertheless praise Nate Silver for his innovation).