A majority of registered Republican voters (57%) say the number of fatalities from coronavirus is acceptable, according to a CBS News/YouGov Poll released on Sunday. At the time the survey was fielded, there were 170,000 coronavirus fatalities and more than 5.5 million cases confirmed in the United States.
About seven in 10 Americans (69%) say the number of COVID-19 deaths in America is unacceptable — a sentiment reflected among Independents (69%) and Democrats (90%). About two in five Republicans (43%) say the fatalities are unacceptable.
A possible reason why Republicans find the number of coronavirus deaths acceptable is because they doubt that the government numbers are accurate. About two-thirds of Republicans (64%) think the number of US fatalities from coronavirus is actually lower than what is being reported. About one in five say the number is accurate (18%) or higher than what is being reported by the government (18%).
In contrast, two-thirds of Democrats (68%) believe the death count from COVID-19 is higher than what is being reported. Just one in five (20%) say the death toll is accurate, and 12 percent think it is lower than the reported numbers. Independents are split between whether the number of people who have died from coronavirus in the United States is higher (41%) or lower (38%) than what is officially reported.
The CBS News/YouGov Poll also revealed that about three-quarters of Republicans (73%) believe things are going for the United States in its efforts to deal with the outbreak of coronavirus. Just 38 percent of Americans overall agree.
See the toplines from this CBS News/YouGov Poll
Related: How Republican voters feel ahead of the convention
Methodology: The CBS News national survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 2,226 U.S. registered voters interviewed between August 19-21, 2020. The margin of error is ± 2.4 points. The CBS News national post-convention survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 957 U.S. registered voters re-interviewed after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, between August 20-22, 2020, and who had been interviewed in CBS News polls prior to the convention. The margin of error is ± 3.6 points.
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