POLL: Most millennials just fine with Confederate monuments

A new poll suggests that those college students who are demanding the removal of Confederate monuments are actually in the minority among their peers.

University campuses have figured prominently in the recent controversies surrounding statues, markers, and other monuments honoring Confederate soldiers and political leaders.

Administrators at Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art, for instance, have praised the removal of Confederate statues in Baltimore, while monuments located on or near the campuses of the University of Tennessee, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Duke University have become the targets of anonymous vandals.

[RELATED: Duke statue resembling Robert E. Lee vandalized]

Students at many other universities, meanwhile, have started petitions or staged protests to demand the removal of Confederate monuments on campus and in nearby towns.

While these incidents give the impression that the majority of Millennials support such action, the numbers say otherwise.

A survey of 1,125 American adults conducted this week by The Marist Poll, in conjunction with National Public Radio and PBS Newshour, found that 60 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 support maintaining Confederate monuments as historical symbols—roughly the same percentage reported among older age groups.

The 30 percent of Millennials who believe such monuments should “be removed because they are offensive to some people” also tracks closely with the 30-44 and 45-59 age groups, and is only somewhat greater than the 23 percent of those over 60 who expressed the same view.

Notably,60 percent of Millennials also opined that “President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville” was “not strong enough,” while 54 percent “disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing” compared to just 24 percent who approve.

[RELATED: UCLA profs invite students to join weekly anti-Trump protest]

Red Alert Politics, however, points out that the Marist poll failed to include an option for those who favor relocating Confederate monuments to places like cemeteries or museums, potentially skewing the responses.

Campus Reform reached out to The Marist Poll for clarification of that point, but has not received a response.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @SFarkas48