Down The Middle News: Poll Shows Partisan Differences Over How Seriously People Are Taking Coronavirus

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A majority of Individuals say they lack belief in what they’ve heard from President Trump on the coronavirus. That’s the discovering of a brand new NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist ballot. It was carried out this previous Friday and Saturday and launched immediately. As NPR’s Don Gonyea studies, there’s additionally a deep partisan divide on how severely to deal with the disaster.

DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Let’s begin with one of many voters who participated within the survey. Sixty-eight-year-old Patricia Bell lives outdoors Pittsburgh. She’s a average Republican. We requested her in regards to the president.

PATRICIA BELL: I believe we type of blame the president an excessive amount of.

GONYEA: She’s been watching the information carefully as companies and states and, lastly, the federal authorities have known as for more and more severe responses.

BELL: However do I agree with the response? I believe it is a severe situation. I believe, to some extent, we have overhyped it.

GONYEA: Given the partisan divide we see on situation after situation in American politics immediately, it is hardly a shock deep divisions present up in polling on this. However what’s putting is the dimensions of that divide. A stable majority, 60-37, say they do not have belief in what they’re listening to from the president on the coronavirus. However that hole turns into large whenever you break it out by social gathering. Ninety-one % of Democrats say they do not belief the president’s phrases on this, whereas 74% of Republicans do.

LEE MIRINGOFF: All of it comes all the way down to credibility. Who do you consider?

GONYEA: Lee Miringoff is the top of the Marist ballot, which carried out the survey.

MIRINGOFF: The politics of the period and the polarization that exists has performed out, not less than thus far, when it comes to how individuals are perceiving the severity of the occasion – whether or not sufficient is being accomplished, whether or not it is being blown out of proportion.

GONYEA: The share of people that suppose the troubles in regards to the coronavirus are overblown has grown. Weeks in the past, the quantity was round 25%. On this ballot, it is grown to just about 40%. That is pushed by GOP skepticism in regards to the response.

In Montana, 51-year-old Harry Kenck is a securities dealer and a political unbiased who says he is a conservative. Proper now he is extra fearful in regards to the impression on the financial system.

HARRY KENCK: Is that this a society-killer? Is it going to destroy complete nations’ governments and economies? Is that this the start of the top of the world? I do not suppose so.

GONYEA: In North Carolina, 60-year-old Anne Tendyke is a Democrat. She works as a monetary analyst. She says the seriousness of the coronavirus is just not overblown.

ANNE TENDYKE: Take a look at the numbers. Take a look at the historical past. Take a look at the info.

GONYEA: She then provides…

TENDYKE: I do not see it as a conspiracy. I do not see it as media hype. I take a look at the science. I perceive how viruses work. I perceive how they unfold. They will unfold when folks do not have signs.

GONYEA: This ballot was taken earlier than the president’s messaging has gotten extra dire and extra consistent with recommendation from medical consultants over the previous two days. Pollster Miringoff says he’ll be watching to see if that shift leads to a change in any of this skepticism he has discovered.

Don Gonyea, NPR Information, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript offered by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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