Who was wrong when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock? Let’s go to the polls

According to a new poll, three in five Americans disapprove of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards after he made a poorly received joke about Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. But there are some groups who believe Rock was “more wrong” than Smith in the Oscars altercation. And those aren’t the only seemingly contradictory findings.

In a poll of 1,319 Americans, YouGov found that 61% of respondents thought it was wrong that Will Smith “hit Chris Rock for his joke” (only 21% said he was not wrong, and 19% were not sure – so it is what it is, Tiffany Haddish).

The biggest differences in the results were that 72 percent of those over 65 thought Smith was wrong, but only 46 percent of those aged 18 to 34 did so (with 27 percent of the younger group thinking Smith was right).

In fact, 59% of U.S. adults said it is “never okay to hit someone for something they said.” Jaden Smith obviously disagrees.

While 39% of respondents “disapprove of the Academy Awards allowing Will Smith to stay on the show after punching Chris Rock” (34% agree), they overwhelmingly believe Smith should not be stripped of the Oscar he won that night (70% vs. 16%). After all, Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein still have their Oscars.

Another poll conducted by Blue Rose with 2,162 online respondents asked the more general question “Which side was more wrong?” In that poll, 52.3% thought Rock was “more wrong” than Smith. Again, the largest gap was between 18-34 year olds (57.8% said Rock was more wrong) and those over 65 (51.8% said Smith was more wrong).

The wording of the question is important: “There was an incident at the Academy Awards last night that you may have heard about. The host, comedian Chris Rock (note: Rock was the host, not the presenter), made a comment about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss and joked that she should be cast as GI Jane in a movie. In response, her husband, actor Will Smith, stormed the stage and punched Rock in the face. Who do you think was more in the wrong?” So the answers weren’t necessarily about whether Smith’s slap was justified, but a direct comparison of the two men’s provocative actions.

The results revealed a few more details. For example, 56.5% of women said Rock was more wrong, compared to 47.6% of men. By a razor-thin margin, 50.1% of Biden voters said Smith was more wrong; 50.8% of Trump voters said Rock was more wrong (along with 53% of nonvoters). Those with a four-year college degree (57.6%) and an advanced degree (51.6%) said Smith was more wrong; those with only a high school diploma (56.6%) or an incomplete high school diploma (59.8%) said Rock was more wrong.

There were also large differences in income levels: those earning less than $25,000 (63.4%) and $25,000 to $50,000 (56.4%) were strongly against Rock (“Rock was more wrong”), and those earning $100,000 to $150,000 (51.7%) and over $150,000 (54.2%) blamed Smith more.

And the bizarre result of a OnePoll survey of 1,003 Americans: 66 percent think Smith should be arrested. But 62 percent of those surveyed still thought the slap was justified.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.