Nearly three-quarters of white adults who report that they regularly attend religious services (72%) say they are “very” or “somewhat” confident they could safely attend in-person services right now at their regular house of worship without spreading or catching the coronavirus. By contrast, around half of Black (49%) and Hispanic (51%) Americans who are similarly observant express such confidence. The other half of Black and Hispanic attenders say they are “not too” or “not at all” confident they could safely go to in-person religious services right now without spreading or catching the virus, according to the survey, which was conducted July 13 to 19.
In this analysis, regular religious service attenders are defined as those who said in a 2019 survey that they typically attend services at least once or twice a month or say in the new survey that they attended in-person services in the last month.
Hundreds of people participate in the Scream of the Excluded on Sept. 7, 2019, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The event denounces the worsening of social inequality, environmental destruction, and resource cuts in educational and social areas. (Fabio Vieira/FotoRua/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The coronavirus outbreak stopped much of the world in its tracks in early 2020 and continues to cast doubt on the well-being of households and communities around the globe. But even before the pandemic, many people around the world felt pessimistic about income inequality, governance and job opportunities, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in spring 2019.
Across 34 countries surveyed, a median of 65% of adults said they felt generally pessimistic about reducing the gap between the rich and the poor in their country.Many also held doubts about the way their political system works (median of 54%) and the availability of well-paying jobs in their country (53%). When it comes to their country’s education system, however, more people expressed optimism than pessimism (53% vs. 41%).
Cerritos Elementary School Principal Perla Chavez-Fritz, right, shows Los Angeles County Superintendent Debra Duardo a classroom at her school in Glendale, California, on May 26. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Americans have mixed views about whether K-12 schools in their area should offer in-person instruction, online instruction or a combination of both as the coronavirus outbreak intensifies across much of the country. And while the public sees health risks to students and teachers as the top factor that should be given a lot of consideration as schools decide whether to reopen, there are wide partisan gaps in these views, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Overall, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (28%) say that, all things considered, K-12 schools in the area where they live should provide online instruction five days a week in the fall, while a smaller share (19%) say schools should provide in-person instruction five days a week. The largest share of Americans (36%) say K-12 schools in their area should provide a mix of online and in-person instruction.
Among parents with children who will be enrolled in elementary, middle or high school in the fall, 32% say K-12 schools in their area should offer online instruction five days a week, while a similar share (34%) say schools should offer a mix of online and in-person instruction. About a quarter of these parents (23%) say schools in their area should offer in-person instruction five days a week.
A robust public polling industry is a marker of a free society. It’s a testament to the ability of organizations outside the government to gather and publish information about the well-being of the public and citizens’ views on major issues. In nations without robust polling, the head of government can simply decree citizens’ wants and needs instead.
After the 2016 presidential election, some observers understandably questioned whether polling in the United States is still up to the task of producing accurate information. Errors in 2016 laid bare some real limitations of polling, even as clear-eyed reviews of national polls in both 2016 and 2018 found that polls still perform well when done carefully.
One way to help avoid a repeat of the skepticism about surveys that followed the last presidential election is to narrow the gap between perception and reality when it comes to how polling works. People have many notions about polling – often based on an introductory statistics class, but sometimes even less – that are frequently false. The real environment in which polls are conducted bears little resemblance to the idealized settings presented in textbooks.
With that in mind, here are some key points the public should know about polling heading into this year’s presidential election.
People attend a Black Lives Matter protest outside Lewisham Police Station in London on June 3 after a video emerged showing six officers restraining a Black woman nearby. (Guy Smallman/Getty images)
Protests and debates over racism and police brutality have spread far beyond America’s shores since the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. And public officials have joined the discussion in many countries – including in four nations where Pew Research Center has been tracking the Twitter activity of national legislators for much of the past two years.
Indeed, many legislators in these four countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – directly addressed Floyd’s killing and the subsequent protests on their Twitter accounts, according to a new analysis by the Center. The analysis looks at predominantly English-speaking countries where lawmaker tweets can be analyzed in a standardized way, but these nations are far from the only ones where Floyd’s death has commanded attention among political leaders.
A 59% majority of British members of Parliament who tweeted between May 26 and June 10 posted about Floyd or used the phrase “Black lives matter” or the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, according to the new analysis. Smaller percentages of national legislators in Canada (44%), Australia (26%) and New Zealand (14%) did so, too.
A growing share of registered voters say it is personally important to them to get messages about the presidential election and other important issues from the Donald Trump and Joe Biden campaigns, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early June as part of the American News Pathways project. The increase comes even as the coronavirus outbreak and protests over the killing of George Floyd have dominated the public’s attention in recent months.
In the June 4-10 survey, a majority of voters said it is very (28%) or somewhat important (30%) to them personally to get messages from the presidential campaigns about important issues. About four-in-ten said it is not too important (25%) or not at all important (17%).
The share of voters saying it is very or somewhat important to get messages from the Trump and Biden campaigns increased 9 percentage points between late April and early June. Much of this increase resulted from more voters saying it is very important to them: As of June, 28% said it is very important to get these messages, up from 21% in April.
Americans in both major parties now see China much more negatively than in the recent past, but Republicans are more likely than Democrats to express skepticism across a range of measures, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The survey, conducted in June and July, comes as Donald Trump and Joe Biden both make China a key campaign issue ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.
Below are five key facts exploring these partisan differences in more detail.
As COVID-19 cases have surged in the United States, young adults face a weakening labor market and an uncertain educational outlook. Between February and June 2020, the share of young adults who are neither enrolled in school nor employed – a measure some refer to as the “disconnection rate” – has more than doubled, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by Pew Research Center. Most of the increase is related to job loss among young workers.
At the beginning of 2020, the share of Americans ages 16 to 24 who were “disconnected” from work and school mirrored rates from the previous year. But between March and April, the share jumped significantly, from 12% to 20%. By June 2020, 28% of youths were neither in school nor the workplace.
While not the highest on record, June’s 28% disconnection rate – which translates into 10.3 million young people – is the highest ever observed for the month of June, dating back to 1989 when the data first became available. This trend is one indicator of the difficulties young people are facing as they transition into adulthood during a global pandemic.
As 2020 census workers begin knocking on the doors of millions of U.S. households that have not returned their census questionnaires, four-in-ten U.S. adults who have not yet responded say they would not be willing to answer their door, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Among those who say they have not participated in the census, 40% say they would not be willing to talk to a census worker who came to the door; 59% say they would be at least somewhat willing. Those who have not responded to the census so far, according to the survey, are disproportionately likely to be from groups the census has struggled to count accurately in previous decennial census collections, including the Black and Hispanic populations.
The survey of 4,708 U.S. adults, conducted online June 16 to 22, finds that 76% say they or someone else in their household already responded to the census. Among the rest, 14% say their household has not responded and 10% are unsure. (The survey share who say they participated in the census is higher than the official Census Bureau response rate. See “How we did this” below for details.)
Since the first census of the United States in 1790, counts that include both citizens and noncitizens have been used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives, with states gaining or losing based on population change over the previous decade. If unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. were removed from the 2020 census apportionment count – which the White House seeks to do – three states could each lose a seat they otherwise would have had and three others each could gain one, according to a Pew Research Center analysis based on government records.
If unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone. California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one instead of two, and Texas would gain two instead of three, according to analysis based on projections of Census Bureau 2019 population estimates and the Center’s estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population.
