New Polls Indicate Half of Americans Are In Favor of Cruz’s Proposed Muslim Neighborhood Patrols

Last week, Ted Cruz stated that Muslim neighborhoods should be patrolled by officers of the law to prevent radicalization and just about everyone had an opinion. Lindsey Graham and Rush Limbaugh represented the pro-Cruz and pro-patrol side while NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio had the anti-Cruz and anti-patrol side.

As it turns out — at least according to two polls — many Americans are joining ranks with Graham and Limbaugh. According to one poll by Morning Consult, 50% of respondents were in favor of the patrolling of Muslim neighborhoods. 71% of Republicans were completely on-board while only 34% of Democrats were all for it. 20% of Republicans opposed it while 56% of Democrats were against it.

Morning Consult summed up their findings like this:

Have the terrorists won? The main motif to emerge from a new Morning Consult survey taken after the attacks in Brussels last week is that the threat of terrorism may diminish how much people worry about privacy and civil rights.

A majority of Americans voters appear to be willing to do whatever it takes, even backing what amounts to a revocation of essential American liberties and ideals, in an effort to keep us safe.

Another poll was conducted by Huffington Post and YouGov. Its results looked like this:

Those results were similar to Morning Consult’s, but the HuffPo/YouGov respondents were also shown to be more interested in cooperation than anything:

All of this comes after news broke yesterday that Cruz’s main opponent for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, would not support internment camps for Muslims, but still supports being “very vigilant” about the “big, big problem coming up.”

h/t Salon

[image via WikiMedia Commons]

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