Americans are suffering from pandemic fatigue, but that doesn't mean voters want what Republicans are offering: elevating personal choice over public health and thereby endangering everyone.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's overwhelming defeat Tuesday of the GOP recall effort was the surest sign yet that working aggressively to save lives is a winner at the ballot box.
The White House also seems to get in a very real way that pandemic fatigue doesn't mean voters want the government to get complacent or scale back efforts to contain the pandemic.
At the White House press briefing Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged Americans’ "frustration" but recommitted the administration to use "every lever possible" to "protect more people, to save more lives."
New polling from Navigator Research, a consortium of Democratic pollsters, shows that voters appear to be responding to Biden's more aggressive efforts to vaccinate the nation and beat back the pandemic.
Over the past couple of weeks, Navigator found a 4-point increase in the share of voters who say Biden “is doing enough” to get the U.S. past the pandemic, including a 5-point increase among both independents (33% to 38%) and Republicans (23% to 28%). The poll was conducted after Biden announced his new vaccine push last week (Sept. 9-13) and found that, overall, a 48% - 37% plurality of voters now say Biden is doing enough to end the pandemic, up from 44% at the end of last August.
Public opinion of Republicans, however, is moving in the other direction. A 54% majority of voters say Republicans in Congress aren't doing enough to end the pandemic nationwide, up from 51% late last month. And just 29% of voters think GOP congressional members are doing enough to get the country past the pandemic.
Pandemic pessimism has also dipped slightly among voters since Biden's announcement, with the percentage of respondents saying "the worst is yet to come" in the pandemic falling from 54% in late August to 47% now. The decline was mainly driven by independents (61% to 49%), Black Americans (68% to 49%), AAPI (51% to 36%), and Hispanic Americans (55% to 43%), according to Navigator.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's overwhelming defeat Tuesday of the GOP recall effort was the surest sign yet that working aggressively to save lives is a winner at the ballot box.
The White House also seems to get in a very real way that pandemic fatigue doesn't mean voters want the government to get complacent or scale back efforts to contain the pandemic.
At the White House press briefing Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged Americans’ "frustration" but recommitted the administration to use "every lever possible" to "protect more people, to save more lives."
New polling from Navigator Research, a consortium of Democratic pollsters, shows that voters appear to be responding to Biden's more aggressive efforts to vaccinate the nation and beat back the pandemic.
Over the past couple of weeks, Navigator found a 4-point increase in the share of voters who say Biden “is doing enough” to get the U.S. past the pandemic, including a 5-point increase among both independents (33% to 38%) and Republicans (23% to 28%). The poll was conducted after Biden announced his new vaccine push last week (Sept. 9-13) and found that, overall, a 48% - 37% plurality of voters now say Biden is doing enough to end the pandemic, up from 44% at the end of last August.
Public opinion of Republicans, however, is moving in the other direction. A 54% majority of voters say Republicans in Congress aren't doing enough to end the pandemic nationwide, up from 51% late last month. And just 29% of voters think GOP congressional members are doing enough to get the country past the pandemic.
Pandemic pessimism has also dipped slightly among voters since Biden's announcement, with the percentage of respondents saying "the worst is yet to come" in the pandemic falling from 54% in late August to 47% now. The decline was mainly driven by independents (61% to 49%), Black Americans (68% to 49%), AAPI (51% to 36%), and Hispanic Americans (55% to 43%), according to Navigator.