As more migrants arrive at the U.S. southern border, the politically polarized issue of immigration was one of the most dominant topics in the coverage of President Joe Biden’s early days in the White House.
Immigration was one of the five topics most covered by 25 major news outlets, according to a Pew Research Center study of news coverage of the first 60 days of the Biden administration, accounting for 11% of all stories. It was topped only by health care (17%) and the economy (22%). (References to COVID-19 were coded separately from topics.)
But the amount of attention paid to Biden’s handling of immigration issues varied significantly across media outlets – a finding borne out by the content analysis and a survey of 12,045 U.S. adults.
More than a year after the coronavirus outbreak began, many Black Americans continue to reel from the economic fallout. Nearly half of Black adults say the economic impact of the pandemic will make achieving their financial goals harder in the long term. And four-in-ten Black adults live in households that have lost jobs or wages since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
Despite the pandemic’s widespread financial harm, the impact on Black Americans has varied, with the college educated and those who are older faring slightly better than those with lower levels of education and younger Black adults.
A customer shops for a handgun at a gun store in Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Guns are deeply ingrained in American society and the nation’s political debates.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, and about a third of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun. At the same time, President Joe Biden and other policymakers have proposed new restrictions on firearm access in an effort to address gun violence ranging from rising murder rates in some major cities to mass shootings.
Here are some key findings about Americans’ attitudes about gun violence, gun policy and other subjects, drawn from recent surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup.
Rabbi Sarah Krinsky shows preschoolers how to light a menorah at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Jews in the United States are on the whole less religious than the overall public, at least by standard measures used in surveys. But Jewish Americans participate in a wide range of culturally Jewish activities as well as traditional religious practices.
A new Pew Research Center report, based on a survey of 4,718 Jewish American adults fielded from Nov. 19, 2019, to June 3, 2020, takes a closer look at these and many other topics. Here are 10 key findings from the report.
To learn more about how Americans think about the term, Pew Research Center asked a representative sample of U.S. adults whether they consider each of 13 different news outlets to be a part of the mainstream media or not. The outlets were selected to represent a range of audience sizes and sectors.
Last March, when the coronavirus outbreak took hold of public life and forced many Americans into their homes to quarantine, some speculated that more time together for couples – and, in some cases, obstacles to accessing contraception – could result in a baby boom. Now, however, early data is pointing toward a significant drop in fertility directly related to the pandemic, both in the United States and globally, in the coming years.
Some estimate that there will be close to 300,000 fewer births in the U.S. in 2021 as a result of the outbreak. These conjectures are already coming to fruition based on provisional monthly estimates. Overall, the U.S. birth rate dropped 4% in 2020 based on provisional data, and a look at December 2020 – the month when babies conceived at the beginning of the pandemic would have been born – shows an 8% decline from the previous December, suggesting that women may have postponed pregnancies in response to the ongoing public health crisis.
Abortion has long been a contentious issue in the United States, and it is one that sharply divides Americans along partisan, ideological and religious lines.
Today, a 59% majority of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. These views are relatively unchanged in the past few years. The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 5 to 11, finds deep disagreement between – and within – the parties over abortion. In fact, the partisan divide on abortion is far wider than it was two decades ago.
Demonstrators argue during a protest against U.S. immigration policies in New York City in 2018. (Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
When it comes to key cultural issues, Americans are significantly more divided along ideological lines than people in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of surveys conducted in the four countries in fall 2020.
Across 11 questions on cultural subjects ranging from nationalism to political correctness, the gap between the ideological left and right in the United States – or liberals and conservatives, in the common U.S. parlance – is significantly wider than the ideological gaps found in the European countries surveyed. In some cases, this is because America’s conservatives are outliers. In other cases, it’s because America’s liberals are outliers. In still other cases, both the right and left in the U.S. hold more extreme positions than their European counterparts, resulting in ideological gaps that are more than twice the size of those seen in the UK, Germany or France.
Americans are split on whether former President Donald Trump should be barred from social media. Some 49% of U.S. adults say Trump’s accounts should be permanently banned from social media, while half say they should not be. But views are deeply divided along partisan lines, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The survey, fielded April 12 to 18, was conducted before Facebook’s independent oversight board upheld for now the suspension of Trump’s account that was instituted in the wake of the violent riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Several social media companies acted against Trump after the attack, claiming he violated their terms of use and that his rhetoric could result in more violence.
Only 9% of adult social media users say they often post or share things about political or social issues on social media, according to newly released results from a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Sept. 8-13, 2020. Some 70% of social media users say they never (40%) or rarely (30%) do so.
When asked about five potential reasons for why they do not post about these topics, the top two reasons users cite are concerns that the things they post or share will be used against them and not wanting to be attacked for their views. About a third of those who never or rarely post or share about these issues say that each statement is a major reason.
Roughly a fifth of those who never or rarely post about these issues say that among major reasons for this are not having anything to add to the conversation, not paying close attention to political or social issues, or not wanting to offend others.
