Nov. 3 worries
Poll shows worries over acceptance of outcome
Americans increasingly worry about what will happen at the finish line of this year’s tumultuous campaign, a new USA TODAY/ Suffolk University Poll finds, including whether the voting will be peaceful and the outcome accepted.
Americans are increasingly worried about what will happen at the finish line of this year’s tumultuous election, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds, including whether the voting will be peaceful and the outcome broadly accepted.
Three of four voters express concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day. Only one in four is “very confident” that the United States will have a peaceful transfer of power if Democratic challenger Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump.
“There’s a very angry undertone out there right now,” said Monica Ponton, 72, of St. Petersburg, Florida. The registered nurse, a Democrat who was called in the survey, has already cast her ballot for Biden. “I’m in my 70s, and I feel like this is one of the scariest times I’ve ever seen for America since possibly (President) Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis” in 1962.
Biden holds a steady eight-point lead over Trump in the nationwide poll, 52%44%, taken after the final presidential debate last Thursday. That reflects little change since the survey taken at Labor Day, the launch of the fall campaign season, when the former vice president led by seven points, 50%-43%.
The stability in the race isn’t reflected in confidence about the vote, though. There are fears about the fundamentals of an election that aren’t traditionally
associated with mature democracies. The findings underscore the challenges that whoever wins will face in uniting and reassuring an anxious nation.
“I think it’s a bit rocky right now,” Rachel Hage, a stay-at-home mother of three from Boise, Idaho, replied in a follow-up interview. A Republican, she plans to vote for Trump.
Nearly everyone has been touched by COVID-19. A majority of those polled, 53%, say the pandemic has had a “major impact” on their lives. Another 30% say it has had a minor impact. Just 16% say it has had little or no impact.
That impact could include the disease, which has infected nearly 9 million Americans and killed more than 225,000, and the economic upheaval that has followed.
Asked in an open-ended question
what issue was most important in deciding their vote, 19% named the economy and jobs. Ten percent said the pandemic, and 9% said health care, a related concern. The only other issue that reached double digits was “character/honesty/trust,” mentioned by 10%.
There was a partisan divide on what issue mattered most. Republicans were more likely to cite the economy, not the coronavirus, as their driving concern, 32% compared with 4%. But Democrats were more likely to cite the pandemic, not the economy, 15% compared with 5%.
Together, those two concerns overwhelmed others, even hot-button issues. Just 3% named abortion rights or climate change; 2% taxes or immigration; 1% gun control or education.