Fresh off of yesterday's release of the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, yet another poll has been released, and it too spells bad news for how voters view President Joe Biden's handling of the Wuhan coronavirus. Thursday's poll comes from NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ.
A plurality of respondents, at 35.3 percent, say they "strongly disapprove" when it comes to "the way Joe Biden is handling the COVID-19 pandemic." A majority, 54.6 percent, strongly disapprove or "somewhat disapprove (19.3 percent)."
Even more grim is how just 15.5 percent of respondents say that they trust Biden when it comes to "information about COVID-19." He at least fares better than "the news media," though, which only 10.2 percent of respondents say they trust. Biden, however, gets about half of the support that Dr. Anthony Fauci does, whom 30.8 percent of respondents say they trust.
Further, just 10.9 percent of respondents say that the federal government "has communicated well regarding COVID vaccines and boosters."
Multiple questions reveal that respondents are quite concerned about the Wuhan coronavirus and its variants, with perhaps no result more telling than the 51.8 percent who think the pandemic will "never" be over.
A NewsNation write-up from Katie Smith cites experts who have reviewed or helped with the poll's findings:
“What’s going on there is called COVID fatigue,” said Robert L. Murphy, a professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University and the executive director of the Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health. Murphy did not help with the NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll, but reviewed its findings in advance for this article.
“People are just tired of COVID,” Murphy said. “They’re tired of living with it. They’re tired of the restrictions, they are tired of the problems, and they’re just basically numb to the idea of COVID. Many people have just turned it off.”
Scott Tranter, an adviser for Decision Desk HQ, said its poll suggests, “The population does not have a positive outlook on COVID (or) the economy and it appears they blame Joe Biden.”
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What's also surely not helping Biden's approval ratings is that more people died in 2021 as a result of the coronavirus than did in 2020, when then-President Donald Trump was in office. As I highlighted last night, Biden's approval ratings on this issue have gone down significantly, considering it used to be his top one.
Speaking of the economy, the poll also found that, as concerned with the coronavirus as respondents might be, they're even more concerned about inflation. A plurality of respondents, at 45.4 percent, says inflation is the biggest concern, while 40.9 percent say it's the coronavirus. Almost all of the respondents, 91.9 percent, are "somewhat concerned (31.8 percent)" or "very concerned (60.1 percent)" about inflation.
The poll was conducted on January 10, with 1,013 registered voters. The margin of error varied by question.
The timing means the poll was conducted before it was revealed on Wednesday that inflation hit 7 percent, the highest in 40 years.
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