The level of public acceptance of evolution in the United States is now solidly above the halfway mark, according to a new study based on a series of national public opinion surveys conducted over the past thirty-five years. “From 1985 to 2010, there was a statistical dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution,” commented lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. “But acceptance then surged, becoming the majority position in 2016.”
In these surveys, American adults in representative national samples were asked whether they accepted, rejected, or didn’t know (or weren’t sure) about the statement “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” From 1985 to 2007, the respondents were in effect evenly divided between acceptance and rejection of evolution. Although acceptance enjoyed a slight lead for all these years except 1985, its lead was not statistically significant except in 1999.