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The most concrete data on public opinion about an outright porn ban comes from the General Social Survey, which asks respondents if porn should be illegal to all, should be illegal to those under the age of 18, or should be legal.

The results are pretty clear: since the question was first asked in 1973, a plurality has always said that porn should only be illegal for kids. The gap between that plurality and those who say it should be totally illegal has only grown: in 1973, 41% wanted a full ban compared to 48% who wanted it illegal under 18. In 2018, those figures are 31% and 65%, respectively.

Gallup routinely polls Americans on their views on the moral acceptability of certain issues, including pornography: 61% of respondents to its 2019 poll said that porn was morally wrong. By way of comparison, that percentage is on par with the share who believe smoking marijuana (65%) or engaging in same-sex relationships (63%) are morally acceptable. Porn was less likely to be considered morally acceptable than physician-assisted suicide, gambling, abortion, and drinking alcohol—all of which Americans generally support at least some regulation.

Gallup has been asking about porn's morality since 2011 and, with one outlier, the share who say porn is morally acceptable has stayed under 40 percent. But we know Americans have grown less likely to say we should ban porn—have they also grown less likely to say porn is immoral?

There is no continuous data on this question, so we can't know for certain. But we can cobble together several surveys to try to get a bigger picture. Between 1973 and 1994, the GSS asked respondents if they believed that pornographic materials lead to the "breakdown of morals." Between 1987 and 2007, the Pew Values Survey asked if "nude magazines and X-rated movies provide harmless entertainment for those who enjoy it."

Putting together these three data sets does not conclusively reveal Americans' changing views on porn's morality. But assuming that the three questions at least correlate, we can note some degree of consistency. Between 1973 and 2018, across all of our measures of popular perception, between 30 and 45% of Americans thought some version of "porn is morally acceptable," always less than a majority.

One other interesting, albeit outdated, fact shows up in the Pew data. In 2007, Pew polled two questions—the standard one about "nude magazines and X-rated movies," and one that appended "on the internet." Internet pornography, it turns out, was considered way worse than its offline counterpart—just 27% said it was "harmless entertainment."

Some of the results are unsurprising—the older you are, and the more right-leaning you are, the more likely you are to support a porn ban. But the most notable determinant might be sex: across every age group and political affiliation, women are significantly more likely than men to support a ban on porn. In fact, self-identified "liberal" women are almost as likely as "conservative" men to support a porn ban.