Public support for capital punishment continued a decadeslong decline in 2025, dropping to the lowest level recorded in 50 years.

And yet executions carried out by governmental authorities are expected to reach their highest level in 15 years — nearly doubling over last year’s numbers.

Forty-six people were executed in 2025, according to an annual report released on Monday by the Death Penalty Information Center, which provides comprehensive data on each year’s execution trends. Two more executions — one in Florida and one in Georgia — are scheduled for later this week.

The nearly 50 people who will be executed this year is a steep increase from the 25 people killed by capital punishment in 2024.

“There is a huge disconnect between what the public wants and what elected officials are doing.”

“There is a huge disconnect between what the public wants and what elected officials are doing,” Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Intercept, noting that public polling has found just 52 percent of the public supports executions and opposition to the practice is at the highest level since 1966.

The surge was driven by Florida, which is poised to conduct 19 executions, accounting for 40 percent of the nation’s death sentences in 2025. Only Texas has ever killed as many people on death row in a single year.

“It very much feels political,” said Maria DeLiberato, legal and policy director at the Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “It seems the current Florida administration has really been in lockstep with the Trump administration, and this idea of appearing to be tough on crime.”

In response to an inquiry, Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, said, “My advice to those who are seeking to avoid the death penalty in Florida would be to not murder people.”

Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas each had five executions, meaning just four states accounted for nearly three-quarters of the executions carried out over the past calendar year.

Even as the number of executions surged, the number of new death sentences handed out at trial declined.