Recently, Governor Beshear referenced a poll showing strong support for the actions he has taken to deal with the COVID pandemic. Being the stats nerd that I am, and wondering what else the poll might show, I tracked down the survey he was referring to.
It’s a national survey done by the Covid States project. They do regular reports on the pandemic, including our opinions on various issues surrounding it. This one is entitled “Report #32: Update on Public Support for Measures Aimed at Curbing COVID-19.” You can find the entire report here (PDF).
The report surveyed people in all 50 states on seven restrictive measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. You’ll note they survey these every so often, in order to see if there are any trends.
You can see that across the country, there is fairly strong support for six of the seven restrictions, with “Requiring most businesses to close” getting the lowest approval rating at 60%. (Still more than half, though.)
What about Kentucky?
Here are Kentucky’s numbers on those seven restrictions in this latest survey:
- Asking people to stay at home and avoid gathering in groups — 86% approval
- Requiring most businesses other than grocery stores and pharmacies to close — 62%
- Cancelling major sports and entertainment events — 83%
- Limiting restaurants to carry-out only — 78%
- Restricting international travel to the U.S. — 89%
- Restricting travel within the U.S. — 71%
- Prohibit K-12 schools from teaching in person — 73%
Okay, so far so good. But, what about comparing Kentucky to the states around us? Do Kentuckians approve of these measures at higher rates, or lower rates, when compared to those states or to the nation as a whole? Here’s your answer.
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And, some graphs as well
Sometimes, it’s easier to see data visually, rather than just in a block of numbers. So, I made a few graphs as well.
Here is a column graph showing the same data as in the table above. I kept the national and Kentucky columns solid, to make them easy to pick out. Do you see anything interesting?
Here’s the interesting thing to note in this graph: The approval percentages in Kentucky are higher than the national average for all seven restrictions.
There are other conclusions you can draw from this data, but that was one that really struck me when I looked at it.
And finally, just to see, I took all the approval percentages for each state and did an average. I then did a map to compare the average approval percentages by state. And guess what? Kentucky’s citizens (in the survey) were more in favor of these restrictions than any of our surrounding states — except Illinois, which we tied with.
So, when you hear that people across the state are furious at Governor Beshear for the restrictions, and that people don’t approve of what he is doing, you might want to point them to this survey. Sure, it’s just one survey, and it’s a point in time – but it appears that not only are the governor’s plans working to protect us, but a goodly majority of the state knows it.
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