Americans Are Split Over Whether Columbus Deserves A Holiday

Americans are close to evenly divided on whether Christopher Columbus deserves a day devoted to him, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

A 56 percent majority of Americans view Columbus favorably. But just 41 percent think he should get his own federal holiday, while 38 percent say we shouldn't celebrate Columbus Day. 

Some of that may be sour grapes: Just 13 percent of people employed full-time and 18 percent of people employed part-time say they get Columbus Day off. Those workers who are enjoying a three-day weekend are 21 points more likely than the rest of the workforce to support keeping the day a holiday.

But some of the naysayers are likely also motivated by the controversy that's led some cities, including Seattle and Minneapolis, to celebrate Monday as "Indigenous Peoples' Day" in addition to Columbus Day.

Asked who deserves the most credit for discovering America, a 39 percent plurality of people polled named Native Americans, while just 22 percent named Columbus.

The results were divided along partisan lines, with Democrats more than twice as likely as Republicans to give Native Americans credit.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Oct. 9 through Oct. 10 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here . More details on the polls' methodology are available here .

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov's reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.