Poll: On eve of execution, Virginians broadly support penalty

(Cross-posted from Behind the Numbers.)

With John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, scheduled to be executed tomorrow, Virginia voters are broadly in favor of the death penalty for those convicted of murder, according to new data from a Washington Post poll.

Virginia voters favor the death penalty by a better than 2 to 1 margin, with 66 percent supportive of it, 31 percent opposed. And intensity on this issue is with the supporters: 45 percent "strongly" back capital punishment, 18 percent are that solidly opposed.

But in Northern Virginia - site of several shootings by Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo - a smaller majority of 56 percent backs the death penalty, compared with 71 percent in the rest of the state.

Read Post polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta's full post at the Behind the Numbers blog.