Kat Stafford and Hannah Fingerhut | the Associated Press

May 21, 2021

A year after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer sparked global protests and a racial reckoning, a majority of Americans say racism and police violence are serious problems facing the nation. Yet relatively few believe attention in the past year to the issues has led to positive change.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows Americans are more likely than they were before Floyd’s death to say that police violence is a serious problem and about half think police who cause harm on the job are treated too leniently by the justice system. The poll also found that about 6 in 10 Americans say racism in the United States is a very or extremely serious problem; it’s similar to the percentage that said the same thing one year ago.

But about half of Americans, including about 6 in 10 Black Americans, say Derek Chauvin conviction of Floyd’s murder has not changed their level of confidence in the criminal justice system. About one-third say their confidence increased. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted in April on state charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death. A federal grand jury indicted Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s arrest and death after the poll was conducted.

“Racism is a core feature of American life and it dominates certain relationships between African Americans and white Americans in ways that I don’t see how they’re going to change in the near or distant future,” said Kyle T. Mays, assistant professor in African American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

AP-NORC polling showed a shift in views of police violence and injustice toward Black Americans last June, just weeks after Floyd’s killing. In 2019, just 36% of Americans called police violence an extremely or very serious problem. After Floyd was killed, that number increased to 48%, and 45% say so now. About 6 in 10 say police are more likely to use deadly force against a Black person than against a white person.

At 77%, the overwhelming majority of Black Americans say police violence is a very serious problem, compared with 36% of white Americans. Among white Americans, the percentage saying police violence is not a serious problem increased from 26% last June to 36% now; that’s roughly the same percentage who said so in 2019, before Floyd’s killing.

The partisan gap in views of police violence as a serious problem has also widened since last June. Among Democrats, about 7 in 10 say police violence is a very serious problem. Among Republicans, 58% say it is not a serious problem, compared with 44% last June.

Georgia resident Linda R. Curtis, who was a police officer for 24 years, believes police misconduct is a serious issue, partly because of problematic behavior she witnessed throughout her career. Despite her history within law enforcement, as a Black woman, she worries about her family’s safety.

“When police see me, they don’t say, ‘Oh, this is a retired police officer,’ or that my other half is a retired firefighter or that my two children are sons of a retired police officer and firefighter,” Curtis said. “They just see two Black men and an opportunity. I’ve always taught my sons how to respond when they’re stopped because of what I saw in my own ranks.”

A majority of Americans continue to support sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including 25% who think it needs a complete overhaul and 43% that it needs major changes. An additional 27% support minor changes, while just 4% think no changes are needed. Black Americans are most likely to call for the largest changes.

Louisiana resident Alan Hence said that as a Black man, he has faced discrimination by police who, he believed, were often aggressive toward him during routine traffic stops because of his race. His personal encounters and the “deep hurt” he felt after the killing of Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police reinforced his belief that the nation’s criminal justice system needs to be overhauled.

“This country was founded on supremacy that cultivated racism and I believe that it created a culture in America that stands strong today and has proven extremely hard to change,” said Hence, 40. “But investing in changing police culture, changing their relationships and procedures when dealing with the public, could have a drastic effect.”

Relatively few Americans, 24%, say attention on police violence against Black Americans over the past year has led to change for the better, while 31% say it has led to change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Fifty-four percent of Black Americans say it has not made a difference, with the remainder split evenly between seeing change for the better and for the worse.

“Nothing has really fundamentally changed, even if you put one individual in prison for police violence,” said Mays, the UCLA professor and author of “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States.”

The House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in March, but the bill is unlikely to win approval in the Senate before the May 25 anniversary of Floyd’s death. The bill, which would end qualified immunity and implement other changes, has faced significant Republican opposition, as well as criticism from some activists who believe it doesn’t go far enough.

Beyond policing, about 8 in 10 Black Americans and about two-thirds of both Hispanic and Asian Americans say racism in the U.S. is a very or extremely serious problem. Among white Americans, about half call it that serious, and about 3 in 10 more say it is moderately serious.

Black Americans say they personally have faced discrimination in a variety of ways. Six in 10 say they have been discriminated against often or sometimes when dealing with the police, compared with just about 1 in 10 white Americans. About 3 in 10 Asian Americans and about 4 in 10 Hispanic Americans say the same.

About 6 in 10 Black Americans also say they have been regularly discriminated against when applying for jobs or in stores or shopping malls, about half when applying for housing or for a loan and about 4 in 10 when receiving health care.

The intersection of dueling crises — the pandemic and the racial justice movement — that have disparately impacted people of color has forced some white Americans in particular to struggle with the nation’s history of racism in ways that they never have before.

“George Floyd definitely had an impact on me,” said Andy Campbell, 57 and an Oklahoma minister. “It was a matter of realizing that the whole country was built on this lie of racism. And that the history of the country was built on a lie of exceptionalism. White supremacy is a white problem. That’s who has to deal with it.”

___

Stafford reported from Detroit and Fingerhut from Washington.

___

Stafford is a national investigative writer with The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Kat__Stafford.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,842 adults was conducted April 29-May 3 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Lauran Neergaard and Hannah Fingerhut | the Associated Press

May 11, 2021

Fewer Americans are reluctant to get a COVID-19 vaccine than just a few months ago, but questions about side effects and how the shots were tested still hold some back, according to a new poll that highlights the challenges at a pivotal moment in the U.S. vaccination campaign.

Just 11% of people who remain unvaccinated say they definitely will get the shot, while 34% say they definitely won’t, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

That leaves a large swath of Americans in the middle who might still roll up their sleeves — including 27% who say they probably will and 27% who say they probably won’t — if someone credible addressed their concerns. That’s where National Institutes of Health immunologist Kizzmekia Corbett comes in.

Corbett helped lead development of the Moderna shot, and she spends hours giving plain-spoken answers to questions from Americans — especially Black Americans like her — to counter misinformation about the three vaccines used in the U.S.

No, COVID-19 vaccines won’t cause infertility: “Whoever started that rumor, shame on you.”

No, the shots’ speedy development doesn’t mean corners were cut: “We worked our butts off for the last six years” hunting vaccines for earlier cousins of COVID-19 — a head start that made the difference, Corbett recently told the AP.

Getting as many people vaccinated as fast as possible is critical to returning the country to normal. More than 150 million people — about 58% of all adults — have received at least one dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As that number grows, reluctance is inching down. Overall, the AP-NORC poll found about 1 in 5 American adults say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated, compared to about a third in January, when the shots were just rolling out.

Black Americans likewise are becoming more open to the shots, with 26% now saying they definitely or probably won’t get vaccinated compared with 41% in January. That’s similar to the 22% of Hispanic Americans and white Americans the poll found unlikely to get vaccinated. Among Asian Americans, just 9% say they definitely or probably won’t get the shots.

Holdouts are from all over American society — fueling experts’ advice that there is no one-size-fits-all vaccine message and that people need to hear from trusted sources, whether that’s scientists like Corbett or their own doctors. Adults under 45, rural Americans and Republicans are especially likely to say they will avoid vaccination, the poll found. But again, attitudes are changing: 32% of Republicans now say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated, down from 44% in January.

About three-fourths of those who say they are unlikely to get vaccinated have little to no confidence that the vaccines were properly tested, and 55% are very concerned about side effects, the poll found. Even among those who say they will probably get vaccinated but have not done so yet, concerns about proper testing are elevated compared with people who have received their shots already.

In forums hosted by colleges, Black pastors, doctors and even basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Corbett says the best way to overcome distrust is to put the science in understandable terms for strangers just like she does for family. Later this spring, she’s moving from the NIH to Harvard’s School of Public Health to continue both her vaccine research and that outreach to communities, the school plans to announce on Tuesday.

The vaccines’ speedy development “is historic and it is brag-worthy,” said Corbett, whose NIH team was able to customize a shot that matched the new virus after spending six years developing vaccines against other dangerous coronaviruses such as MERS.

But “really, we should have started the conversations very early about what went into it,” she said, so the public understood that no steps were skipped.

A combination of huge studies and real-world data show the main side effects of the U.S. vaccines are temporary fevers or aches as the immune system revs up. The shots are undergoing unprecedented safety monitoring, which last month led to a temporary pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccinations to determine how to handle an incredibly rare risk of blood clots.

Even after that pause, overall confidence in the vaccines is up slightly compared with a few months ago, with 45% of all adults now very or extremely confident that the shots were properly tested for safety and effectiveness, compared with 39% in an AP-NORC poll in February.

But side effect myths persist. Corbett calls the fertility concern “completely absurd,” and in forum after forum explains why it’s biologically impossible for the vaccines to alter anyone’s DNA.

The repetition is OK: “People need to hear things multiple times,” she said.

Plus, many Americans have some of the same questions scientists are still trying to answer, such as whether or when people might need a booster dose.

“Those are things that even I can’t even answer. But what I can say is that we’re doing everything we can to make sure we can answer it as soon as possible,” Corbett said.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,842 adults was conducted April 29-May 3 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Julie Pace and Hannah Fingerhut | the Associated Press

May 10, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is plunging into the next phase of his administration with the steady approval of a majority of Americans, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The survey shows Biden is buoyed in particular by the public’s broad backing for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the fourth month of his presidency, Biden’s overall approval rating sits at 63%. When it comes to the new Democratic president’s handling of the pandemic, 71% of Americans approve, including 47% of Republicans.

The AP-NORC poll also shows an uptick in Americans’ overall optimism about the state of the country. Fifty-four percent say the country is on the right track, higher than at any point in AP-NORC polls conducted since 2017; 44% think the nation is on the wrong track.

Those positive marks have fueled the Biden White House’s confidence coming out of the president’s first 100 days in office, a stretch in which he secured passage of a sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package and surged COVID-19 vaccines across the country. The U.S., which has suffered the most virus deaths of any nation, is now viewed enviably by much of the rest of the world for its speedy vaccination program and robust supplies of the shots.

“We are turning a corner,” said Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator.

The improvements have also impacted Americans’ concerns about the virus. The AP-NORC poll shows the public’s worries about the pandemic are at their lowest level since February 2020, when the virus was first reaching the U.S. About half of Americans say they are at least somewhat worried that they or a relative could be infected with the virus, down from about 7 in 10 just a month earlier.

As has been the case throughout the pandemic, there is a wide partisan gap in Americans’ views of pandemic risks. Among Democrats, 69% say they remain at least somewhat worried about being infected with the virus, compared with just 33% of Republicans.

Despite the overall positive assessments of Americans, Biden’s advisers are well aware that the next phase of his presidency is potentially trickier. Vaccination rates have slowed, and the administration is grappling with how to persuade those who are reluctant to get the shots about their safety and efficacy.

Biden’s legislative agenda for the rest of this year also faces obstacles on Capitol Hill. Republicans are resisting his calls for passing a sweeping infrastructure package, and there’s insufficient support among Democrats for overhauling Senate rules in a way that would allow the party to tackle changes to immigration policy, gun laws and voting rights on its own.

There are also potential warning signs emerging on the economy after a strong start to the year. A new government report out Friday showed employers added just 266,000 jobs in April, sharply lower than in March and far fewer than economists had expected. The slowdown was attributed to a multitude of factors, including nearly 3 million people reluctant to look for work because they fear catching the virus. Some businesses — and Republican lawmakers — also argue that a $300-a-week jobless benefit, paid for by the federal government, is discouraging some of the unemployed from taking new jobs.

Biden, however, argued that the report is an indication that more federal spending is needed to help bolster the economy. He’s pitched to Congress a $4 trillion package for spending on infrastructure, education and children, a measure many liberal Democrats say should be bigger and most Republicans argue is far too large.

“We never thought that after the first 50 or 60 days everything would be fine,” Biden said after Friday’s job report was released. “There’s more evidence our economy is moving in the right direction. But it’s clear we have a long way to go.”

What’s unclear is whether the employment slowdown will continue or how it will impact Americans’ views of Biden’s handling of the economy. Ahead of Friday’s new jobs numbers, his approval rating on the economy stood at a solid 57%.

Compared with Biden’s approval ratings on the pandemic, there is a starker partisan divide in views of his handling of the economy. Nearly all Democrats, 91%, back his economic stewardship, while just 19% of GOP voters do.

While the pandemic and the economy have dominated Biden’s early months in office, other significant issues loom.

Immigration in particular has become a growing concern for the White House as it grapples with an increase in migration, including by unaccompanied minors, at the U.S. border with Mexico. Republicans have tried to tie the uptick to Biden’s rollback of more stringent border policies enacted by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Immigration is also among Biden’s lowest-rated issues in the AP-NORC survey. Overall, 43% approve of his handling of the issue, while 54% disapprove.

The president also receives lower marks on gun policy, which has catapulted back to the forefront of the national debate following a string of mass shootings across the country. Americans are largely split over Biden’s approach to the issue, with 48% approving and 49% disapproving.

The next phase of Biden’s presidency is also likely to include more action on foreign policy. He announced that all U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by September, and American negotiators have resumed discussions with Iran on a new nuclear agreement. The White House has also signaled that Biden may hold his first in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer.

Thus far, a slim majority of Americans, 54%, say they approve of Biden’s foreign policy.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,842 adults was conducted April 29-May 3 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Aaron Morrison, Kat Stafford and Emily Swanson | the Associated Press

March 12, 2021

NEW YORK (AP) — A year ago, Elvia Banuelos’ life was looking up. The 39-year-old mother of two young children said she felt confident about a new management-level job with the U.S. Census Bureau — she would earn money to supplement the child support she receives to keep her children healthy, happy and in day care.

But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people into strict lockdown, Banuelos’ outlook changed. The new job fell through, the child support payments stopped because of a job loss and she became a stay-at-home mom when day cares shuttered.

“The only thing I could do was make my rent, so everything else was difficult,” said Banuelos, of Orland, California.

Millions of Americans have experienced a devastating toll during the yearlong coronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than 530,000 people have died in the United States. Those losses haven’t hit all Americans equally, with communities of color hit especially hard by both the virus and the economic fallout.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that compared with white Americans, Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to have experienced job and other income losses during the pandemic, and those who have lost income are more likely to have found themselves in deep financial holes.

That’s on top of Black and Hispanic Americans being more likely than white Americans to say they are close to someone who has died from COVID-19 and less likely to have received a vaccination. The pandemic has killed Black and Hispanic Americans at rates disproportionate to their population in the U.S., according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Banuelos, who identifies as Latina, said the disparity in pandemic experiences between “the upper class and people who are in a tighter situation” became glaringly clear to her early on in the pandemic. Even after two rounds of federal direct stimulus checks, she felt she was further behind than well-off Americans.

The relief “didn’t last that long,” Banuelos said.

Overall, 62% of Hispanic Americans and 54% of Black Americans have lost some form of household income during the pandemic, including job losses, pay cuts, cuts in hours and unpaid leave, compared with 45% of white Americans.

For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, sample sizes are too small to analyze in the AP-NORC poll.

Jeremy Shouse, a restaurant manager from North Carolina, saw his hours greatly reduced during the early months of the pandemic when the small business was forced to shut down. Shouse, a 33-year-old Black man, said the restaurant has since reopened but went from making more than $5,000 in-house per day prior to the pandemic to only $200 on some days.

“One year later and things still aren’t the same,” Shouse said, adding his wages have dropped 20%.

About 6 in 10 Hispanics and about half of Black Americans say their households are still facing the impacts of income loss from the pandemic, compared with about 4 in 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans are also especially likely to say that impact has been a major one.

“We find that systemic racism plays a huge role in this process,” said Rashawn Ray, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the pandemic in Detroit. “I think what we’re going to see once the dust settles is that the racial wealth gap has actually increased.”

There have long been racial disparities in how Americans experience economic downturns and recessions. However, following a recovery from the Great Recession and well into the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between Black and white Americans narrowed amid strong job growth and economic activity. But a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a gap that had declined to as little as 3 percentage points rose to 5.4 percentage points last August, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.

The AP-NORC poll also finds Hispanic Americans are especially likely to think it will take a long time to dig their way out of the financial hole. About half of Hispanics say that they are still feeling the effects of income loss and that it will take at least six months to recover financially. About a third of Black Americans say the same, compared with about a quarter of white Americans.

Forty-one percent of Hispanic Americans say their current household income is lower than it was at the start of the pandemic, compared with 29% of Black Americans and 25% of white Americans.

And about 4 in 10 Black and Hispanic Americans have been unable to pay a bill in the last month, compared with about 2 in 10 white Americans.

For people of color, the trauma experienced due to economic turmoil has been compounded by immense personal losses. About 30% of Black and Hispanic Americans say they have a close friend or relative who has died from the coronavirus since last March, compared with 15% of white Americans.

Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative working to address public health disparities through the Black church, said she is confident in the Black community’s ability to recover economically and medically.

“The emergency economic situation of the community is dismal,” Fraser-Howze said, “and it’s going to be worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivors — we came through slavery and Jim Crow. We figured out how to stay alive. I do believe and have faith that our community will come back.”

___

Swanson reported from Washington. Morrison, who reported from New York, and Stafford, who reported from Detroit, are members of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,434 adults was conducted Feb. 25-March 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Ken Sweet and Emily Swanson | the Associated Press

March 9, 2021

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they’re still feeling the financial impact of the loss of a job or income within their household as the economic recovery remains uneven one year into the coronavirus pandemic.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research provides further evidence that the pandemic has been devastating for some Americans, while leaving others virtually unscathed or even in better shape, at least when it comes to their finances. The outcome often depended on the type of job a person had and their income level before the pandemic.

The pandemic has particularly hurt Black and Latino households, as well as younger Americans, some of whom are now going through the second major economic crisis of their adult lives.

“I just felt like we were already in a harder position, so (the pandemic) kind of threw us even more under the dirt,” said Kennard Taylor, a 20-year-old Black college student at Jackson College. Taylor lost his job as a server in the campus cafeteria in the first weeks of the pandemic and struggled to make rent and car payments while continuing his studies. He had to move back in with his family.

The poll shows that about half of Americans say they have experienced at least one form of household income loss during the pandemic, including 25% who have experienced a household layoff and 31% who say someone in the household was scheduled for fewer hours. Overall, 44% said their household experienced income loss from the pandemic that is still having an impact on their finances.

The poll results are consistent with recent economic data. Roughly 745,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits the week of Feb. 22, according to the Labor Department, and roughly 18 million Americans remain on the unemployment rolls.

Thirty percent of Americans say their current household income is lower than it was when the pandemic began, while 16% say it is higher and 53% say there’s been no change. About half of those who experienced any form of household income loss during the pandemic say their current household income is lower than it was.

The poll’s findings reflect what some economists have called a “K-shaped recovery,” where there have been divergent fortunes among Americans. Those with office jobs were able to transition to working from home while those who worked in hard-hit industries such as entertainment, dining and travel suffered. The poor have struggled to recover financially compared to the wealthy and Black and Latino households have not bounced back as well as their white counterparts.

Logan DeWitt, 30, kept his job with the government through the pandemic because he could work remotely. But his wife, a childcare worker, lost her job and after months of searching for a new one has returned to school. Their financial situation was further complicated by the fact that their first child was born in the early months of the pandemic.

“We had plans to get a house. Had to scrap that idea, and we consolidated down to just one car. We do a lot of cooking from home and buying in bulk,” DeWitt said.

About 1 in 10 Americans say they couldn’t make a housing payment in the last month because of the pandemic, and roughly as many say that of a credit card bill. Overall, about a quarter of Americans say they’ve been unable to pay one or more bills in the last month.

Thirty-eight percent of Hispanics and 29% of Black Americans have experienced a layoff in their household at some point during the past year, compared with 21% of white Americans.

This recession has been particularly hard on younger Americans, too. Forty percent of Americans under 30 report lower income now, compared to March 2020. About 4 in 10 have been scheduled for fewer hours. Roughly a quarter say they quit their job. Many millennials, who experienced the Great Recession early in their adult lives, are now experiencing yet another major financial crisis.

Congress is about to finalize the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package that includes aid for many Americans and business still feeling the impact of the pandemic. Timing is crucial — many of the relief measures passed earlier by Congress, most notably unemployment benefits, will be coming to an end in the next few weeks.

“It’s really going to help us,” said Nikki Luman, 43, from Ohio. Luman worked part-time at her local library, which had to close in the early weeks of the pandemic. The library is still operating at low capacity due to COVID restrictions, which translates into fewer hours for her each week.

“That’s $400 a month that we have been missing for the past year,” she said.

Things are not as dire as they were in the early stages of the pandemic for some Americans, in part because of the previous measures taken by Washington. Also the changes in lifestyle — less eating out, less traveling, no live entertainment — have allowed some Americans to make their financial lives healthier. In the poll, roughly 4 in 10 say they’ve been saving more money than usual, and about 3 in 10 have been paying down debt faster than usual.

Tracie Jurgens, 44, works in the trucking industry. Jurgens said her income evaporated in the first weeks of the pandemic as demand for truckers plummeted. Jurgen’s boss was able to get a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, which he used to purchase new equipment in the summer as things started to recover.

“I don’t know what I would have done if he didn’t get another truck,” she said.

___

Swanson reported from Washington. AP Reporter Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report from Washington.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,434 adults was conducted Feb. 25-March 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.