Nearly half of U.S. voters oppose Facebook’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump from the social media platform, according to a survey release Friday by Rasmussen Reports.
Rasmussen found 48% of voters surveyed oppose Facebook’s decision to make Trump’s ban from the platform permanent, while 41% favored banning Trump from Facebook, and 10% of respondents were unsure.
48% of voters oppose Facebook’s decision to make Trump’s ban from the platform permanent . . .https://t.co/E73XFzC3PY pic.twitter.com/OPBsixD2wl
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) May 7, 2021
Facebook’s oversight board upheld the company’s decision to ban Trump early last week.
“The Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible,” the board said in a statement.
Respondents’ views on the social media company’s decision to ban the former president fell largely across party lines, with 62% of Democrats favoring banning Trump permanently from Facebook, while 67% of Republicans opposed the ban, according to Rasmussen Reports.
The survey was conducted among 850 likely U.S. voters between May 5-6, with a +/- 3 percent margin of error at a 95% confidence level.
A similar Rasmussen Reports survey found that 59% of likely U.S. voters believed operators of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are politically biased in the decisions they make. That survey found 26% of respondents disagreed and said that the social media companies edit their content in a fair and balanced way.
Former President Donald Trump released a statement Wednesday, saying, “What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country.” (RELATED: ‘An Embarrassment To Our Country’: Trump Flames Big Tech Just Hours Before His Facebook Ban Was Upheld)
“Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before,” the statement read.