Rutgers scholar Katherine Ognyanova is available to comment on the latest Rutgers-Harvard-Northeastern-Northwestern survey data from The COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States.

The researchers surveyed 22,501 people across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia from June 12 to June 28. The researchers polled participants about how the President and governors responded to COVID-19.

To view the full report and findings, click here.

Among the findings:

  • The average governor has experienced a 9.8 point decline in approval. Only five states—New Jersey, Hawaii, Michigan, South Dakota and Vermont— saw their governors’ approval ratings increase; approval rates declined in the other 45.
  • In many Northeast, Midwest and West Coast states that were hardest hit early in the pandemic, even those governors whose approval ratings declined still maintained higher ratings than other governors throughout the crisis.
  • President Trump started with a relatively low approval rating (below those of all 50 governors), and has declined further, by 8.2 points. Only Governor Ducey of Arizona has a lower rating. The president’s approval rating is fairly low everywhere, hovering around 50% in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, and lower everywhere else.
  • Exploration of the erosion of support for the president suggests that this decline is fairly similar across parties, race and ethnicity, age, income, and education.
  • Trump’s popularity has declined from 56% to 42% among older respondents with a high school education or less.
  • Governor Ducey of Arizona has the lowest approval for his COVID-19 response of any governor in the country, dropping from a high of 57% in early May to 32% in late June.

Katherine Ognyanova is an assistant professor at Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information. She conducts research in network science, computational social science, social technology, media, civic and political communication.

Additional collaborators on the report include: David Lazer, Alexi Quintana, Matthew Simonson and Hanyu Chwe of Northeastern University; Matthew A. Baum and John Della Volpe of Harvard University; James Druckman of Northwestern University; Roy H. Perlis and Mauricio Santillana of Harvard Medical School

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