71% of Democrats STILL Believe People Should Stay Home as Much as Possible

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Nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters believe Americans should continue to stay home “as much as possible,” according to a Gallup survey released Friday, despite the waning Covid-19 pandemic.

Seventy-one percent of the party’s voters advise that Americans stay at home, according to the poll, compared to 29 percent who say Americans should “lead their normal lives as much as possible.” The number is flipped among independent voters, with 64 percent saying Americans should strive to live normally.

Republicans were the most monolithic on the issue, with 87 percent saying they support a return to business as usual.

As of Friday, a strong majority of Americans — 63.2 percent, or about 170 million — had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Of that number, 137 million — 41 percent — had been fully vaccinated. A total of 33 million people had contracted a confirmed case of the virus at some point since tracking began in early 2020, while 593,377 Americans — or .02 percent — died as a result of it.

Those numbers made it the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, accounting for about 11 percent of total deaths that year.

Despite the significant partisan divide, the survey was the first by Gallup since the pandemic’s inception where a majority of Americans said life should return to normal. Fifty-six percent agreed with that opinion, while 44 percent said pandemic-induced habits should continue. That was a nearly perfect flip from April when the numbers were reversed, 55-45 percent.

The survey included 3,572 American adults who participated from May 18-23. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points, though Gallup noted the margin was “higher” for individual subgroups.