For the first time in months, the number of people in the U.S. who are worried they or someone in their family will be exposed to the coronavirus is rising again. In the latest NBC|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking poll, 35% of people say they are very worried they or someone close to them will be exposed, up from 32% last week and 31% the week prior to that. This marks the first increase in concern since mid-July, when the number of people saying they were very worried about exposure to the coronavirus had inched up to 38%. Since then, concern has been incrementally increasing week-over-week.
Americans continue to say that the coronavirus outbreak is more of a health crisis than an economic crisis, both for the country as a whole (54% to 44%), and for themselves personally (55% to 43%).
Overall, 37% of people say the coronavirus has impacted their life “in a very major way,” while another 37% say it has impacted them “in a fairly major way,” 21% say it has impacted them “only in a small way,” and nearly no one (3%) says it has “not changed [their] life in any way.” Republicans (25%) are much less likely than independents (40%) and especially Democrats (49%) to say the coronavirus has impacted their life in a very major way. Whites (33%) are also less likely than people of color (Blacks - 48%, Hispanics - 45%, Asians - 45%) to say their lives have been impacted in a very major way; people in households with higher income levels are also less likely than those with lower household incomes to say they’ve been impacted in a very major way.
View the full results by partisanship below.
Read more about our polling methodology here.
