Democrats’ Calls to Defund the Police Are a Losing Bet at the Polls

Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and commentators are calling for the defunding or abolition of America's police departments in the wake of officer Derek Chauvin's killing of unarmed black man George Floyd.

While the proposal is popular among the party's progressive activist wing and on Twitter, it faces a hard wall of resistance among the wider public. A recent YouGov poll showed that fewer than 20 percent of Americans of all parties supported any cutting of police funding—a finding consistent with decades of polling.

Police defunding or abolition has long been a...