Pandemic PollWatch: Issue 7

Below is the seventh in a weekly series from GQR that summarizes and analyzes what is known about global public opinion on COVID-19.

Today GQR continues its weekly series of papers that summarize and analyze all publicly available public opinion data on the pandemic, worldwide. This issue focuses on the global debate about economic re-opening, and the potential trade-off with health protections.

With this edition of Pandemic PollWatch, GQR has now reviewed in all over 600 different opinion polls from 97 countries and territories. We invite readers to alert us to any relevant global polling data not captured here. Future installments in this series will go into more depth about other public opinion dynamics regarding the pandemic.

Top insights from this week’s paper:

• There is a broad, although not universal, global preference for prioritizing health concerns over economic re-opening. Most countries with such data, including the US, show a clear preference for restrictions aimed at protecting public health over quick steps toward opening the economy.
• Global concern about contracting the virus continues to be mostly stable, but with a slight increase. Data this week show the highest share of countries (57%) since early March with no major change in the share of their publics who are worried about contracting the virus. But where there is a change, more countries are showing an increase in concern, with the average global level of concern up nearly 2 points this week.
• Government job approval ratings on handling COVID-19 also remain relatively stable. One third of all countries with such data show no significant change in government approval on handling COVID-19; one third show a rise in approval, and one third show a decline. Overall the average change in approval is up a half point. The US, by contrast, continues to see gradual erosion in approval of President Trump’s job in handling the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full article HERE.

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