According to a new survey, more than 40% of Americans say they believe pornography is “morally acceptable” — the highest rate of approval since Gallup first began polling on the subject in 2011.
The Gallup poll, published Tuesday, found that 43% of Americans think pornography is “morally acceptable,” up from 36% last year. The results showed that Americans’ views on pornography had changed more in the past year than in the entire period between 2011 and 2016.
Notably, a majority of Democrats (53%) said they think pornography is morally acceptable, compared to just 27% of Republicans. The partisan gap widened this year to a 26-point difference. While the number of Democrats who describe themselves as socially liberal did not change much since last year, the percentage of Democrats who say pornography is acceptable rose 11 percentage points — something Gallup said could be attributable to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Daniels is suing President Trump, seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement relating to an alleged affair she had with him in 2006
“The cause of the single-year shift on this item, though, is less clear. It may represent something of an outlier, in which case acceptance of pornography would be expected to decrease next year, even if it remains above the 2017 level,” Gallup analyst Andrew Dugan said in the survey report. “Or the shift, though principally driven by a structural trend, may been have been exacerbated by political factors, such as the public battle between Stormy Daniels and the president.”
Other demographic groups that saw a large spike in approval of pornography were non-married individuals (50%) and men aged 18 to 49 (67%).
The poll — which surveyed 1,024 adults by telephone — was conducted from May 1 to May 10 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
