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NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s attempt to make civil unrest a central issue in his re-election campaign has yet to improve his political position, as most Americans do not see crime as a major problem that faces the nation and the majority continue to sympathize with protests against racism, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released Wednesday.
August 31-September. A national opinion poll showed that 40% of registered voters support Trump, a Republican, compared to 47% who said they would vote for his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Biden’s leadership has largely remained unchanged during the past three weeks during which both parties held conventions to nominate their candidates Trump and Biden for the presidency.
Following Biden in most national opinion polls since the novel coronavirus outbreak this year, Trump has tried to change the subject from a pandemic that has killed more than 180,000 Americans, blaming Black Lives Matters protesters for the violence in the cities and accusing Biden of being it. weak in crime.
But the survey showed that the majority (78%) remain “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the coronavirus. Nearly 60% said Trump is at least partly responsible for the prolonged school and business closures due to the virus, as well as the large number of coronavirus cases in the United States. More than 6 million Americans have been infected with the virus, more people than in any other country.
In contrast, most Americans do not view crime as a high priority and do not believe it is increasing in their communities, the survey showed.
Only about 8% of American adults listed crime as a top priority for the country, compared to 30% who said it was the economy or jobs, and 16% who said it was the healthcare system.
And 62% of registered voters, including 62% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans, said crime was not increasing in their communities.
According to the survey, 53% of American adults said they sympathize with people protesting racial inequality, almost unchanged from 52% in a similar poll conducted in late July.
While support for protesters has declined overall since the immediate aftermath of the May police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked a national conversation about race, the poll showed that more than half of suburban Americans and more than half of the undecided registered voters are still sympathetic to them.
Trump and his Republican allies tried to refocus the nation’s attention on crime in the United States during their convention last week, when new clashes erupted following the Jacob Blake police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a crucial battlefield that will help decide the November elections.
Trump has also tried to stoke fears, especially among suburban white voters, about crime-ridden cities and falsely claimed that Biden would “defund the police.” Biden has rejected that position.
“No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said last week at the Republican national convention.
Biden has backed down, accusing Trump of sparking racist fears in the United States in hopes of reviving his campaign.
“The simple truth is that Donald Trump did not protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America,” Biden said in Pittsburgh this week.
The Reuters / Ipsos public opinion poll was conducted online, in English, across the United States. It collected responses from 1,335 American adults, including 551 Democrats and 523 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 3 to 5 percentage points.
(Information by Chris Kahn; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Leslie Adler)
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