A Pew Research poll published last 28 October showed the coronavirus has added to the political divide already existing in the U.S., and Americans see the virus through a political lens more than any of the 12 other advanced economies surveyed.
The poll was taken in the June-August period last year when President Trump was in office and, according to the report on the Pew Research Center website, “the gap was greatest in the U.S., where about three-quarters of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the U.S. had done a good job of handling the coronavirus outbreak, compared with only about three-in-ten among everybody else.”
While the U.S. is clearly the most politically-divided of the nations surveyed, the poll showed:
“Double-digit gaps of this nature also appear in France, Spain, the UK, Japan, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Belgium. This is in spite of the different approaches to dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, from strict national lockdowns in Italy and Spain to the relatively lax approach in Sweden.”
Political viewpoints determined to a great extent how citizens viewed their government’s handling of the economy. The Pew report states:
In six countries – the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Japan – supporters of governing parties were more likely than non-supporters to rate their country’s current economic situation as good. This rift was largest in the U.S., where Republicans and those who lean Republican were more than three times as likely as those who do not support the party to think the U.S. economy is doing well.”
TREND FORECAST: In the U.S., we forecast declining support for the Republican party and strong opportunity for a third party, populist, anti-establishment, anti-tax, anti-vax, anti-immigration political movement.
Considering the political restraints for third parties to be on state ballots in the so-called American “democracy,” it would, however, have to initially be funded by the billionaire class of political investors to achieve national success.
For example, instead of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg having spent a billion dollars for his ill-fated run for the White House in 2020 on the Democratic ticket, if a billion dollars was given to fund a new party, the chances of success would be far greater than the money wasted on his defeat.
