RALEIGH, N.C. – Two political scientists on Wednesday said national polls show little support for reopening the economy, but recent protests could change that.
Organizers of Tuesday's #ReopenNC protest in Raleigh said they drew about a thousand demonstrators, up from about 150 to 200 at the first protest a week earlier. Catawba College Professor Michael Bitzer said the protests across the country are striking a deeply conservative tone on economic and personal liberty.
“It's almost a kind of libertarian ideological perspective of, the government can't tell me what I can and cannot do,” Bitzer said.
So far, only a handful of polls have been conducted since the protests began. Among them:
An AP-NORC poll released on Wednesday found about 61 percent of Americans feel the coronavirus restrictions that have been imposed “are about right.” This poll was conducted from April 16-20 and involved 1,057 adults
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 58 percent of Americans feared the United States would move too quickly in reopening the economy, versus 32 percent fearing it would move too slowly. This poll was conducted from April 13-15 and involved 900 registered voters
An Axios-Ipsos poll found 72 percent of Americans believe going back to the way they lived their lives before the pandemic would pose a moderate to large risk if they did so right now. This poll was conducted from April 17-21 and involved 1,021 people
UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Marc Hetherington has started running a survey of his own. It involves 2,400 people and will track how people's attitudes about coronavirus change over time by checking back in with the same people over and over again. An initial round last week found 78 percent of respondents felt fighting the health effects of COVID-19 was more important than reopening the economy.
Hetherington said he sees parallels between the Tea Party movement in 2010 and today's economic protests. He said media attention could draw more people to support the protests, though he noted the Tea Party protests did not happen during a global pandemic.
When asked about the polling data, #ReopenNC co-founder Ashley Smith said she was not familiar with some of the national polling. Instead, she pointed to an online survey from Congressman Dan Bishop's office in which 81 percent of respondents said they supported letting the statewide stay-at-home order expire at the end of the month as planned. It was not immediately clear how large the sample was. Experts such as Pew Research caution respondents may self-select for answering online surveys.
Bitzer said any polling data on COVID-19 should be approached with caution. He said polls represent a snapshot in time and the results depend on a number of factors ranging from sample selection to how questions are worded.