Americans Increasingly Dislike How Republican Governors Are Handling The Coronavirus Outbreak

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, governors have generally received better marks for the way they’ve handled the crisis than President Trump has. However, new polling suggests that may be changing, especially for Republican governors in states where the number of coronavirus cases has spiked in recent weeks.

Gallup recently found that Americans in the 26 states governed by Republicans are souring on their leaders’ approach to the public health crisis, while sentiment remains steadily positive among residents of the 24 states governed by Democrats. In fact, over the past month, the share of respondents who agreed that their governor cared about the safety and health of their community fell by 8 points, from 61 percent to 53 percent, in states where a Republican is governor; opinion in Democratic-run states hovered around 65 percent, despite some movement week to week.



And on the question of how clearly governors were communicating their plans to address the coronavirus, the GOP also got low marks. Among respondents in Republican-run states, just 43 percent said their governor offered a clear plan, down from 54 percent about a month ago. Meanwhile, 58 percent of respondents in Democratic-run states said that their governor was communicating clearly, which was nearly identical to the share who said so in early June.

Gallup isn’t the only pollster to find GOP leaders getting lower scores for the way they’re dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Change Research’s polling of six battleground states found especially poor numbers for Republican governors in two states where the number of coronavirus cases surged in the first half of July: Florida and Arizona. In Change’s polling, 57 percent disapproved of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s handling of the outbreak, and a whopping 71 percent disapproved of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s response. Additional polling in Arizona and Florida second these findings. OH Predictive Insights found that opinion of Ducey’s approach went from a net positive in June (59 percent approved, 37 percent disapproved) to a net negative in July (35 percent approved, 63 percent disapproved). Likewise, surveys by CBS News/YouGov found 53 percent of Floridians said DeSantis was doing a somewhat or very bad job and 62 percent of Arizonans said the same of Ducey.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-increasingly-dislike-how-republican-governors-are-handling-the-coronavirus-outbreak/