By Hannah Fingerhut and R.J. Rico

July 5, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans don’t expect to rely on the digital services that became commonplace during the pandemic after COVID-19 subsides, according to a new poll, even as many think it’s a good thing if those options remain available in the future.

Close to half or more of U.S. adults say they are not likely to attend virtual activities, receive virtual health care, have groceries delivered or use curbside pickup after the coronavirus pandemic is over, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Less than 3 in 10 say they’re very likely to use any of those options at least some of the time.

Still, close to half also say it would be a good thing if virtual options for health care, for community events and for activities like fitness classes or religious services continue after the pandemic.

“Rather than this either-or, I think we’re more likely to be facing a hybrid future,” said Donna Hoffman, director of the Center for the Connected Consumer at the George Washington School of Business. “People have found convenience in some of these virtual options that just makes sense, and they don’t necessarily have anything to do with like keeping you safe or the pandemic even though they came of age during the pandemic.”

Digital daily routines became the default in 2020 as the nation reacted to the rapidly spreading virus, which prompted lockdowns, closed schools and shuttered businesses. Some substitutions, like online shopping and video conference calling, already existed. Others were reimagined or popularized during the pandemic.

Either way, Hoffman said, there was “rapid” deployment and adoption of virtual services. It was a question of “how are we going to make this work?” she said.

Cornelius Hairston said his family took precautions throughout the pandemic because his wife is a first responder in the health care field.

“We tried to stay in as much as we could and only come out for essentials,” said Hairston, 40, who recently moved to Roanoke, Virginia.

Hairston joked that his twin 4-year-old boys are “COVID babies” who didn’t even go to a grocery store for much of their young lives. The family used delivery services almost exclusively to avoid venturing out to crowded stores. But going forward, he only expects to use them “from time to time.”

For Angie Lowe, the convenience of telemedicine and time saved was reason enough to do it again even though she and her husband returned to doing things in public more than a year ago.

Lowe had her first telemedicine appointment early in the pandemic when feeling “lonely” and “stuck at home” kept her from sleeping well. She was able to talk with the doctor without having to take extra time off of work to drive to and wait in a medical center.

“It was my first telemedicine appointment, but it won’t be my last,” said Lowe, 48, of Sterling, Illinois. “If I can do it, I’m going to do it.”

For many, though, drawbacks outweigh the benefits of relying on digital services in the future. Adults age 50 or older are especially likely to say they are not planning to use the virtual options asked about on the poll going forward, even though many were introduced during the pandemic to protect the at-risk population.

Despite feeling antsy about COVID-19 and infection rates in Phoenix, Tony DiGiovane, 71, said he found curbside pickup at grocery stores and restaurants to be more hassle than they’re worth.

“By the time I picked up the stuff, I needed more stuff,” he said of his grocery orders, and “something’s always missing or wrong” on takeout orders.

Karen Stewart, 63, recognizes the benefits of video calls, but she’s also found them to be limiting. That’s the case in her job organizing after school programming for kids. She also now sees some of her doctors online, one who provides virtual care almost exclusively and another who uses virtual care in between office visits.

She likes that she doesn’t have to drive, but it means a doctor or nurse can’t take her vitals or be “hands on” in her care. It was “scary,” for example, when all of her appointments in the lead-up to a surgery were online, she said.

“When I do that they they can’t take my blood pressure, my pulse. There’s things that a doctor might pick up on that they can’t see online,” said Stewart of Perris, California.

The pandemic created an opportunity to balance in-person and virtual services to support the physical and mental health of older adults, said Alycia Bayne, a principal research scientist at NORC. That “could be particularly beneficial to older adults with different health issues, mobility limitations, people who lack transportation options, people who do not have or live near a robust social networks like family and friends to lean on,” she said.

Still, there remain limitations with technology access, broadband access and digital literacy, which Bayne said may help explain why the poll finds older adults less likely to use digital services after the pandemic.

Despite the age gap on use of services, similar percentages of adults across ages say it’s a good thing for virtual options for health care, for community events and meetings and for activities to continue after the pandemic.

“They recognize the benefits of virtual services, but they’re also ready to start getting back to their pre-pandemic routines,” she said. “The silver lining, of course, is that these services are now available.”

By Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

July 8, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Concerns about inflation and personal finances have surged while COVID has evaporated as a top issue for Americans, a new poll shows, marking an upheaval in priorities just months before critical midterm elections.

Forty percent of U.S. adults specifically name inflation in an open-ended question as one of up to five priorities for the government to work on in the next year, according to a June poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s a sharp rise from 14% in December and less than 1% the year prior. In all, 77% mention the economy in any way, up from 68% in December. But just 10% specifically mention jobs or unemployment, as U.S. employers continue to hire despite high inflation and weak economic growth.

Now, too, Americans increasingly call their personal finances a major issue: 44% mention it, up from 24% in December and 12% the year before. That includes more mentioning gas or energy prices (33% now vs. 10% in December) and food costs (9% vs. less than 1%).

Those shifts may be advantageous to Republicans as they campaign to win control of Congress in this year’s midterms; the economy has increasingly been a sore subject for President Joe Biden. Still, the economy isn’t the only issue getting more attention this year. Many also prioritize issues that are core to Biden and Democrats’ agenda, including abortion, women’s rights and gun policy, which could help Democrats as they try to pad — or at least protect — their razor-thin majority.

In a troubling sign for both parties, the poll finds many Americans say they think neither side of the aisle is better at focusing on the issues important to them or getting things done.

Sara Rodriguez said she’s concerned about the impact of rising prices of goods, gas and oil on her household’s finances, especially because her income isn’t keeping up.

“We’ve had a savings built up and we’re noticing that it’s definitely going down fast because we don’t make enough money to cover how much the cost of everything has risen,” the 43-year-old quality control coordinator in Bristol, Connecticut, said.

Rodriguez and her husband and son have had to get to their workplaces and run errands using one car over the last couple of months because of her husband’s broken-down truck.

“We just haven’t had the money to get it back on the road,” she said.

The rise in concerns about the economy is paired with a steep decline in the percentage naming COVID-19 as a top issue, even as new variants continue to emerge: Now just 4% mention it, down from 37% in December 2021 and 53% in December 2020.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to mention inflation or personal finances as top issues, but the sharp changes since December are bipartisan.

Daniel Collier, a 39-year-old construction worker in Waynesville, Missouri, thinks lowering gas prices should be a priority.

“It’s hurt me financially,” he said. “I worry about being able to pay the rent, pay utilities.”

He blames Biden for inflation and “poor” economic conditions, saying he thinks the president is “incompetent.”

The poll shows 69% of Americans disapprove of how Biden is handling the economy, including 93% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats. In May, facing an inflation rate at a 40-year high, most Americans said in an AP-NORC poll that they worried about the impact of higher than usual prices on their finances.

For 22-year-old Jakyra Green, rising prices have been prohibitive.

“It’s become very hard to even pay for anything, like rent, gas, and none of our wages are going up,” the college student in Goshen, Indiana, said. “I just spend less or try to not go out the house anymore.”

But Green identified other issues that concern her more. Abortion has long been on her mind as a priority, and it “feels real now” that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. She also identified racism in the U.S. as an important problem.

Mentions of abortion or women’s rights increased sharply to 22% from just 8% in December following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. The poll shows 12% of U.S. adults mention racial issues, similar to December 2021, but a notable decline from 24% in 2020.

“I have these two compounding identities being Black and a woman,” Green said, adding that it’s very concerning that Black women experience higher maternal mortality rates than white women. “It’s just so overwhelming right now in America.”

Mentions of gun issues also ticked up to 30% from 24% in December 2021 — both significantly higher compared with 5% in December 2020. The 2021 poll was conducted just after a deadly shooting at a Michigan high school.

Charles Hagemeyer sees “so many different issues” facing the country. The economy affects him the most personally, but he called out the mass shooting in Highland Park on July 4 as evidence of a guns problem in the U.S. The poll was conducted before that attack, but after tragedies in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.

“Gun violence is another big issue that’s on my mind constantly,” the 68-year-old Jacksonville, Florida, resident said. “You’re afraid to go out anymore.”

Hagemeyer thinks the country is past the point where gun control legislation could even be effective; still, he doesn’t see lawmakers coming together to solve any problem.

The poll shows a majority of Americans — 57% — don’t think one party is better than the other at getting things done. Thirty-seven percent don’t think either is better at focusing on their priorities; the remainder split about evenly between the two parties. Politics is mentioned in some way as a top problem by 29% of Americans.

“It just doesn’t seem like anybody in government wants to work with each other and try to solve some of the issues that the American people face,” Hagemeyer said.

By Anita Snow | The Associated Press

May 9, 2022

PHOENIX (AP) — With anti-immigrant rhetoric bubbling over in the leadup to this year’s critical midterm elections, about 1 in 3 U.S. adults believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.

About 3 in 10 also worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to fear a loss of influence because of immigration, 36% to 27%.

Those views mirror swelling anti-immigrant sentiment espoused on social media and cable TV, with conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson exploiting fears that new arrivals could undermine the native-born population.

In their most extreme manifestation, those increasingly public views in the U.S. and Europe tap into a decades-old conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement,” a false claim that native-born populations are being overrun by nonwhite immigrants who are eroding, and eventually will erase, their culture and values. The once-taboo term became the mantra of one losing conservative candidate in the recent French presidential election.

“I very much believe that the Democrats — from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, all the way down — want to get the illegal immigrants in here and give them voting rights immediately,” said Sally Gansz, 80. Actually, only U.S. citizens can vote in state and federal elections, and attaining citizenship typically takes years.

A white Republican, Gansz has lived her whole life in Trinidad, Colorado, where about half of the population of 8,300 identifies as Hispanic, most with roots going back centuries to the region’s Spanish settlers.

“Isn’t it obvious that I watch Fox?” quipped Gansz, who said she watches the conservative channel almost daily, including the top-rated Fox News Channel program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a major proponent of those ideas.

“Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions,” Carlson said on the show last year. “In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country.”

Those views aren’t held by a majority of Americans — in fact, two-thirds feel the country’s diverse population makes the U.S. stronger, and far more favor than oppose a path to legal status for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children. But the deep anxieties expressed by some Americans help explain how the issue energizes those opposed to immigration.

“I don’t feel like immigration really affects me or that it undermines American values,” said Daniel Valdes, 43, a registered Democrat who works in finance for an aeronautical firm on Florida’s Space Coast. “I’m pretty indifferent about it all.”

Valdes’ maternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Mexico, and he said he has “tons” of relatives in the border city of El Paso, Texas. He has Puerto Rican roots on his father’s side.

While Republicans worry more than Democrats about immigration, the most intense anxiety was among people with the greatest tendency for conspiratorial thinking. That’s defined as those most likely to agree with a series of statements, like much of people’s lives is “being controlled by plots hatched in secret places” and “big events like wars, recessions, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us.”

In all, 17% in the poll believe both that native-born Americans are losing influence because of the growing population of immigrants and that a group of people in the country is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views. That number rises to 42% among the quarter of Americans most likely to embrace other conspiracy theories.

Alex Hoxeng, 37, a white Republican from Midland, Texas, said he found those most extreme versions of the immigration conspiracies “a bit far-fetched” but does believe immigration could lessen the influence of U.S.-born Americans.

“I feel like if we are flooded with immigrants coming illegally, it can dilute our culture,” Hoxeng said.

Teresa Covarrubias, 62, rejects the idea that immigrants are undermining the values or culture of U.S.-born Americans or that they are being brought in to shore up the Democratic voter base. She is registered to vote but is not aligned with any party.

“Most of the immigrants I have seen have a good work ethic, they pay taxes and have a strong sense of family,” said Covarrubias, a second grade teacher in Los Angeles whose four grandparents came to the U.S. from Mexico. “They help our country.”

Republican leaders, including border governors Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas — who is running for reelection this year — have increasingly decried what they call an “invasion,” with conservative politicians traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to pose for photos alongside former President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Vulnerable Democratic senators up for election this year in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada have joined many Republicans in calling on the Biden administration to wait on lifting the coronavirus-era public health rule known as Title 42 that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum. They fear it could draw more immigrants to the border than officials can handle.

U.S. authorities stopped migrants more than 221,000 times at the Mexican border in March, a 22-year high, creating a fraught political landscape for Democrats as the Biden administration prepares to lift Title 42 authority May 23. The pandemic powers have been used to expel migrants more than 1.8 million times since it was invoked in March 2020 on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Newly arrived immigrants are barred from voting in federal elections because they aren’t citizens, and gaining citizenship is an arduous process that can take a decade or more — if they are successful. In most cases, they must first obtain permanent residency, then wait five more years before they can apply for citizenship.

Investigations have failed to turn up evidence of widespread voting by people who aren’t eligible, including by non-citizens. For example, a Georgia audit of its voter rolls completed this year found fewer than 2,000 instances of non-citizens attempting to register and vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded.

Blake Masters, a candidate for Senate in Arizona, is among the Republicans running for office this year who have played into anxieties about a changing population.

“What the left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country,” he said in a video recorded in October. “They want to do that so they can consolidate power so they can never lose another election.”