Utahns have confidence in themselves when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus, their local doctors and hospitals, and Utah state government, but many don’t trust GOP President Donald Trump and the feds to take care of the coronavirus crisis, a new poll finds.
In a new Utah Political Trends survey by UtahPolicy.com and KUTV 2 News, conducted by Y2 Analytics, Utahns’ trust in this time of crisis various quite a bit.
Y2 finds:
While a majority, only 53 percent say they “very confident” or “somewhat confident” in the ability of GOP President Donald Trump and national government to “deal with the coronavirus outbreak.”
47 percent say they are “not too confident” or “not at all confident” that Trump and the national government are up to the challenge.
As you might expect, this breaks out along partisan lines:
93 percent of those who said they are “strong” Republicans trust Trump.
Only 45 percent of independents trust Trump to do the job.
And only 6 percent of “strong” Democrats trust the president to do the required job of fighting the virus.
And, as we’ve seen in many other polls concerning the president, women don’t trust/like him as much as men.
60 percent of male Utahns trust Trump to do a good job with fighting the virus.
But only 47 percent of women trust him, statistically a huge difference between the sexes.
Here are some other findings:
97 percent are confident that their own household can deal with the virus crisis. That’s pretty impressive — Utahns think they can get through this themselves.
72 percent are confident in the U.S. health care systems’ ability to get through this OK.
86 percent trust Utah’s own doctors and hospitals to do the job correctly. Again, a high percentage of confidence in our own abilities close to home.
82 percent believe Gov. Gary Herbert and state officials will do the job required — a real vote of confidence in the governor and state employees hard at work on this crisis.
This week Herbert started daily virtual press conferences to communicate with Utahns and the media about the virus.
The poll was finished before these conferences began, so clearly Herbert was still doing something right to get such high confidence among Utahns.
83 percent believe their own friends and neighbors will get through this crisis OK; perhaps because those surveyed are staying in touch with those folks in an effort to help/make sure they are doing all right. Another good sign that Utahns care about others.
Finally, the survey questions were compiled by Y2 at a time when the Salt Lake International Airport was ground zero for dealing with Utahns coming home to shelter. And, so, a question on how the airport (now all but shut down) is dealing with the crisis shows that 74 percent thought airport officials were doing a good job.
Everyone has heard of the coronavirus outbreak.
Rarely do we see a 100 percent response on anything. But we see it with the virus:
85 percent said they had heard a “great deal” about the virus.
While 15 percent said they had heard “a fair amount.” Together, that’s 100 percent of the Utahns sampled by Y2.
That is good news. Because awareness of the virus is key to social distancing and other measures required to slow its transmission between people.
Y2 sampled 1,331 Utah voters from March 21-30, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percent.
KUTV 2News recently partnered with Utah Policy.com and Y2 Analytics and will be providing polling results on a regular basis throughout the election season. You can sign up for UtahPolicy.com’s daily email newsletter here.
