President Donald Trump has a negative approval rating among registered voters when it comes to his response to coronavirus, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.
Forty-nine percent of survey participants said that they disapprove of how Trump has handled the response to the spread of the virus, known as COVID-19. Forty-three percent of respondents approved with how he has handled the potential crisis.
Views of Trump are largely split across partisan lines, according to the poll. A vast majority of Republicans (87%) support the president, while a similar ratio (83%) of Democrats disapprove of his response. But 50% of independents who responded to the poll said they disapprove of Trump’s actions, while 37% say they approve. (RELATED: Neil Patel: The President’s Dangerous Coronavirus Position)
Quinnipiac conducted the poll of 1,261 registered voters across the U.S. from March 5-8. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.8 percentage points.
Trump has received some praise from health experts for moving early to limit travel from China, which was the point of origin for the virus. More than 80,000 cases have been diagnosed in China, with more than 3,100 deaths. Trump on Friday also signed a bill authorizing $8.3 billion in spending to fight coronavirus.
But the Republican has also come under criticism for downplaying the risk of the virus spreading through the U.S. When the number of cases in the U.S. stood at 15 in February, he predicted that it would soon be eradicated here.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a briefing on the administration’s coronavirus response in the press briefing room of the White House on March 3, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“When you have 15 people, and the 15, within a couple of days, is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump said at a White House press conference Feb. 26.
As of Monday afternoon, Johns Hopkins University said that there are 607 confirmed cases across the U.S. Of those 22, people have died.
Several Republican lawmakers have gone into self-quarantine after interacting with an individual who attended the annual Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington, D.C. late in February. Trump spoke at the conference and has interacted with Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, one of the lawmakers who has gone into quarantine. Trump was with Collins during a visit Friday at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
A majority of Americans are anxious about the spread of COVID-19, according to the Quinnipiac survey. Fifty-four percent of respondents said they are very or somewhat concerned that they or someone they know will come down with the illness. Forty-five percent said they are either not concerned at all, or have little concern.
Fifty-eight percent said that they are concerned that coronavirus will alter their daily lives.
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