As the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak approaches 200,000 in the United States, Americans give their country comparatively low marks for its handling of the pandemic – and people in other nations tend to agree with that negative assessment. Below is a closer look at how people in the U.S. and around the world view America’s response to COVID-19, based on recent Pew Research Center surveys in the U.S. and other countries.
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Supporters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden are divided not just in their views of the two presidential candidates and in their broader political beliefs and values. They are also largely divided in their personal relationships: Roughly four-in-ten registered voters in both camps say that they do not have a single close friend who supports the other major party candidate, and fewer than a quarter say they have more than a few friends who do, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in July and August.
Most voters instead report having a lot of friends who share their political preferences. Around six-in-ten Trump supporters (59%) say they have a lot of friends who share their support for the president’s reelection bid, while a slightly smaller share of Biden supporters (48%) say a lot of their close friends also back the former vice president in the election this fall. Nearly nine-in-ten backers of both Trump (89%) and Biden (87%) say they have at least some close friends who support their candidate for president.
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After roughly six months of living amid a pandemic, many Americans expect their lives to remain changed even after the COVID-19 outbreak is over, according to an August Pew Research Center survey of 13,200 Americans.
About half of U.S. adults (51%) say they expect their lives will remain changed in major ways after the pandemic is over, while about the same share (48%) expect a return to normalcy.
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A host of major news stories have been competing for Americans’ attention in recent weeks. But the public is more likely to have heard “a lot” about ongoing confrontations between police and protesters than several other stories, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Aug. 31 to Sept. 7.
Around eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%) say they have heard or read a lot about ongoing confrontations between law enforcement and protesters in cities around the country. That includes similar shares of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (78%) and Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (80%).
By comparison, smaller shares of adults say they have heard or read a lot about how increased mail-in voting could affect the 2020 presidential election (64%); President Donald Trump’s criticism of the U.S. Postal Service and his administration’s actions toward it (49%); attempts in Congress to pass another economic relief and stimulus bill (40%); and the Trump administration considering banning the social media app TikTok (40%). The survey of 9,220 adults was conducted as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project.
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As racial justice protests have intensified following the shooting of Jacob Blake, public support for the Black Lives Matter movement has declined, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. A majority of U.S. adults (55%) now express at least some support for the movement, down from 67% in June amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd. The share who say they strongly support the movement stands at 29%, down from 38% three months ago.
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Excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book in which President Donald Trump expresses deeper concern about the dangers of COVID-19 than he was publicly conveying at the time have thrust Trump’s statements and messaging on the pandemic back into the campaign spotlight.
The revelations come at a time when Americans are following Trump’s statements on that subject less closely than a few months ago, even though they are still paying close attention to the pandemic overall, according to a new survey, conducted before Woodward’s recordings were published, that is part of Pew Research Center’s American News Pathways project.
When it comes to Trump’s statements, nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults (57%) say the president has been delivering the wrong message about the coronavirus outbreak to the country, and two-thirds say Trump and his administration only sometimes or hardly ever get the facts right about the outbreak. The survey also finds large partisan gaps when it comes to the administration’s credibility and messaging about the pandemic.
Among the 57% of Americans who say Trump has been delivering the wrong message to the country, 23% say it is mostly wrong while 34% say it is completely wrong. That compares with 42% who say his message on coronavirus has been completely right (10%) or mostly right (32%).
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Debates over who is Hispanic and who is not have fueled conversations about identity among Americans who trace their heritage to Latin America or Spain. The question surfaced during U.S. presidential debates and the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. More recently, it bubbled up after a singer from Spain won the “Best Latin” award at the 2019 Video Music Awards.
So, who is considered Hispanic in the United States? And how are they counted in public opinion surveys, voter exit polls and government surveys such as the 2020 census?
The most common approach to answering these questions is straightforward: Who is Hispanic? Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren’t.
Read More →Every U.S. presidential election since 2004 has featured at least one Catholic candidate on one of the major party tickets. But if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins this November, he will be only the second Catholic ever to assume the land’s highest office – John F. Kennedy was the first with a groundbreaking win in 1960.
Biden talks openly about his personal beliefs on the campaign trail, and his faith was a central theme at the recent Democratic National Convention. Having a Catholic candidate on a party ticket, however, does not guarantee support from Catholic voters. U.S. Catholics, who make up roughly one-fifth of the population, have a diverse range of political opinions, even on topics the Catholic Church has taken a clear stance on.
Here are eight facts about Catholics and politics in the United States, based on previously published Pew Research Center studies.
See also: Like Americans overall, U.S. Catholics are sharply divided by party
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Global attitudes about the state of the economy amid the coronavirus outbreak are more negative in some countries than they were during the Great Recession, according to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 10 countries during both crises. But people are also more upbeat about the prospect of a rebound than they were after the financial meltdown more than a decade ago.
In April, the International Monetary Fund predicted the economic downturn resulting from the coronavirus outbreak would be far graver than the Great Recession. With global gross domestic product now expected to contract by 4.9% in 2020, the magnitude of this recession exceeds that of 11 years ago, when year-on-year global GDP growth contracted by 0.1%.
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One-in-seven U.S. adults (14%) say they have tested positive for COVID-19 or are “pretty sure” they have had it despite not receiving an official diagnosis, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Aug. 3 to 16. The survey also finds a sharp increase since the spring in the share of Americans who say they know someone else who has been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19.
Overall, 3% of U.S. adults say they have personally tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the survey. That includes 2% who say they tested positive for an active viral infection – a share that comports with available public health data – and 1% who did not receive a positive test for the virus, but later tested positive for its antibodies, a sign of past infection. Another 11% of adults say they are pretty sure they have had the virus even though they were not officially diagnosed. (It’s important to keep in mind that these findings are based on self-reported information.)
Some groups of Americans are more likely than others to say they have personally tested positive for COVID-19. For example, larger shares of Hispanic (7%) and Black Americans (5%) report testing positive for COVID-19 or its antibodies than their White (2%) or Asian (1%) counterparts.
Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand more about the personal health effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The data was collected as a part of a larger survey conducted Aug. 3 to 16, 2020, among 13,200 U.S. adults. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.
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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.