A poll from RealClear Opinion Research found that one-third of registered Democrats believe Americans have “too much freedom to speak freely.”
Despite the findings, 9 out of 10 poll respondents support the First Amendment.
“This is agreed upon across the demographics, like party affiliation, age, and race,” said director of the poll Spencer Kimball.
When asked to respond to the statement, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” 44.3% of poll respondents said they “somewhat agree” and 38.9% of respondents said they “strongly agree.”
While 76.7% of poll respondents said freedom of speech should be permitted “without government interference or letting the government decide what types of hateful or inaccurate speech should be banned,” 61.3% of respondents said the “government has a responsibility to restrict hateful posts and disinformation on social media platforms.”
A quarter of poll respondents were Independents or another party affiliation, 36.9% were Republican, and 37.7% were Democrat.
Reporting from The Blaze:
A July study titled "Partisan conflict over content moderation is more than disagreement about facts" ran an experiment that showed respondents false headlines aligning with their political party or opposing party. The study, conducted by professors at the University of California, San Diego, found "a large and statistically significant difference between the content moderation preferences of Republicans and Democrats." "Social media companies have come under increasing pressure to remove misinformation from their platforms, but partisan disagreements over what should be removed have stymied efforts to deal with misinformation in the US. Current explanations for these disagreements center on the 'fact gap' — differences in perceptions about what is misinformation," the study explained. "We argue that partisan differences could also be due to 'party promotion' — a desire to leave misinformation online that promotes one's own party — or a 'preference gap' — differences in internalized preferences about whether misinformation should be removed."
