Poll: 37 percent of Americans trust Trump on coronavirus

Just more than 1 in 3 Americans — 37 percent — said in a new poll that they have a good amount or a great deal of trust in the information they hear about coronavirus from President Trump. 

According to the NPR–PBS NewsHour–Marist survey, 60 percent of respondents said they don’t have very much trust in the information they are hearing from the president or don’t trust it at all.  

Among Democrats, just 8 percent said they had a great deal or a good amount of trust in the president, compared to 91 percent who said the opposite.

Seventy-four percent of Republicans, meanwhile, said they trust the information they hear about the virus from the president, while 21 percent disagreed.

Roughly one-third of independents — 34 percent — said they have a great deal or a good amount of trust in the information they hear about the coronavirus from the president, compared to 62 percent who said they do not.

Pollsters also found that the percentage of Americans who say the federal government is doing enough to prevent the spread of coronavirus has also decreased, down to 46 percent of Americans from 61 percent in February.

Eighty-four percent of Americans said in the new survey that they trust information about the virus from public health experts. Seventy-two percent said the same of state and local governments, and 50 percent said they trusted information from news media.

Broken down by party affiliation, 40 percent of Republicans said they think the coronavirus is a real threat, compared to 54 percent who said it is “blown out of proportion” and 6 percent who were unsure. Among Democrats, 76 percent said the coronavirus is a real threat, 4 percent were unsure and 20 percent said it is blown out of proportion.

Independents were more evenly divided, with 50 percent calling it a real threat, 41 percent disagreeing and 9 percent saying they were unsure. Two-thirds of independents said they saw coronavirus as a real threat in February, by comparison.

Seventy-two percent of Republicans said they thought it was a real threat in February, and 70 percent of Democrats agreed last month.

The survey of 835 adults was conducted on Friday and Saturday. It has an overall margin of error of 4.8 percentage points. Among 784 registered voters, the margin of error is 4.9 percentage points.