Americans Want to Return to Normal. But Also They Don’t.
Recent opinion surveys give mixed messages about how Americans perceive the current state of the pandemic, and what they think we should do about it. In a February Washington Post/ABC News poll, for example, 58 percent of Americans said that controlling the spread of the coronavirus is more important than loosening restrictions on normal activities. In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted the same week, 51 percent said we need to learn to live with COVID-19 and get back to normal.
These are two of several examples that show Americans have seemingly conflicting views about the pandemic. A natural question to ask is why—is it the polls or the American people who are confused? And what do Americans really think?
Trust in public-opinion data; in each, the Democratic candidate’s popularity was overestimated in preelection polls, resulting in a surprise victory for Donald Trump in 2016 and a narrower-than-expected victory for Joe Biden in 2020. Despite the cycle of that followed the 2016 errors, which were mostly confined to a few states, . Some pollsters pinned the blame on “,” meaning Trump supporters who wouldn’t answer surveys—perhaps because they’re mistrustful of institutions—but did turn out to vote. These nonrespondents could have skewed the results, making support for Trump seem less robust than it really was.
