After over a year of economically and socially devastating lockdowns, a majority of Americans want a return to normalcy, but 71 percent of Democrats still believe we should “stay at home as much as possible,” according to a recent poll from Gallup.
According to the poll, 56 percent of Americans support returning to normal life as much as possible, while 44 percent believe we should keep staying at home whenever we can. The split is decidedly partisan, with only 13 percent of Republicans believing we should remain home. Meanwhile, independents overwhelmingly support a return to normalcy, with 64 percent of them believing it’s time to resume life as it was pre-pandemic. Gallup additionally notes that both Republicans and independents are overwhelmingly more likely to report that their lives are already back to normal.
A whopping 84 percent of the Gallup poll respondents believe the situation surrounding the virus is improving, a notable 15-point increase since its polling in April, when 69 percent of respondents believed things were improving and 30 percent of respondents reported being concerned about contracting the virus.
This poll marks the first time since the onset of the pandemic that a majority of Americans support a return to normalcy, yet another signal of growing optimism surrounding the remission of the virus and also likely vaccine efficacy.
These shifts in public opinion come as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the current seven-day moving average of daily new cases is not only 35.2 percent lower than the previous seven-day average, a drop from 22,139 reported cases to 14,349 reported cases, but also a massive 94.3 percent lower than they were on Jan. 9 of this year, when 251,374 reported cases marked the virus’s peak.
The severity of COVID-19 continues to vary across different regions, with CDC data showing that only a handful of counties, many of them on the West Coast, have seven-day moving case rates above 1,000.
