POLITICAL SENTIMENT POLL 2020 - INDEPENDENT VOTERS: UNSETTLED MATTERS
Independent voters’ positive feelings about the 2020 presidential candidates have shifted toward former Vice President Joe Biden, according to the latest Political Sentiment Poll from the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.
Independents’ feelings of enthusiasm for Biden doubled from 12 percent in June 2020 to 24 percent in this most recent poll. Enthusiasm among Independent voters for President Trump declined from 24 percent to 14 percent during that same period. Feelings of warmth for Biden remained mostly the same, 9 percent to 10 percent, while feelings of warmth declined from 18 percent to 1 percent for Trump since June.
Meanwhile, feelings of alarm increased for both candidates. Independents’ feelings of alarm about Biden more than doubled, from 6 percent to 15 percent, while feelings of alarm about Trump quadrupled from 6 percent to 25 percent.
Independent voters are also feeling less apprehensive about both candidates. Their apprehensiveness about Biden decreased from 21 percent to 3 percent and about Trump from 3 percent to 2 percent.
This is the fourth in a series of Political Sentiment Polls measuring emotional response to candidates and key issues, gauging their appeal, level of engagement with the candidates and feelings of empowerment. This latest poll was conducted on Sept. 7, 2020 among 393 voters nationwide. Complete results are available here.
The poll also measured the Emotional Temperature™ of Independents on the economy, racial unrest and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Independent voters felt slightly more positive about the economy under Biden than under Trump. They felt somewhat negative about the current state of the economy.
Independents felt more positive about Biden’s words on recent protests and negative on Trump’s handling of the protests. They were slightly positive about the Black Lives Matter movement and slightly negative about strong force used by police.
On COVID-19, Independent voters were very positive about wearing masks in public and very negative about the federal government’s efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. They were more positive about state government efforts to prevent the virus from spreading.
For full results of the most current poll and the three previous polls, visit: https://www.jou.ufl.edu/political-sentiment-poll/.
