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Politics Remains A Big Factor in Voter Views of COVID-19 and America’s Response

Views of the coronavirus crisis and how America has responded continue to break down along party lines, which helps explain why Red Republican states are opening up while Blue Democrat states are extending their lockdowns.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that a plurality (46%) of Republicans believes the United States has overreacted to the coronavirus threat, while 67% of Democrats and 58% of voters not affiliated with either major party say the country has underreacted.

Among all likely voters, 27% say the United States overreacted, while 50% believe it has underreacted. Just 21% think the response has been about right. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Even as the death count continues to fall and many communities are beginning to return to normalcy, only 30% say the overall government response has made America safer. Fifty-one percent (51%) believe the government response has made the country less safe, while 13% feel it has had no impact.

Again, there’s a noticeable partisan difference. While 63% of Democrats and 54% of unaffiliateds believe the government response has made the country less safe, just 33% of GOP voters agree.

Although many of the medical projections about the impact of COVID-19 on the United States have proven to be inflated thus far, voters aren’t buying. Only 31% of all voters think most of these projections were overestimated, while 40% say they were underestimated. Just 24%, however, believe they were about right.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted May 24-25, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Most Democrats blame President Trump, not China, for the coronavirus crisis the country is now experiencing. Other voters disagree.

Republicans (55%) are much more likely than Democrats (12%) and unaffiliated voters (29%) to believe most of the medical projections about the coronavirus were overestimated.

Women feel more strongly than men that the medical projections were underestimated and that the United States underreacted to the coronavirus threat. The older the voter, the more critical they are of the U.S. response.

Blacks are more likely than whites and other minority voters to feel that the overall government response has made the country less safe.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters who feel the country underreacted to the coronavirus threat say the government response made the country less safe. Among those who feel the country overreacted, just 30% agree.

Republicans are a lot more eager than Democrats to emerge from the coronavirus lockdown even if it means more sickness and death. But most voters regardless of party affiliation agree America can’t remain like this indefinitely.

Voters agree government money isn’t enough to counter the coronavirus economic crash, but most Democrats think $2,000 monthly payments to Americans who earn less than $120,000 a year are necessary even as the lockdown begins to break down.

With partisan politics influencing most everything in the Trump era, it’s perhaps no surprise that most Democrats are even unwilling to take a potentially life-saving drug to combat coronavirus because the president endorsed it.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted May 24-25, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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