Approval of Government handling of COVID-19 hits new low

Matthew SmithHead of Data Journalism
September 17, 2020, 8:31 AM GMT+0

Just three in ten think the Government has done a good job – a significant drop from last week

With coronavirus restrictions being toughened once again, the results of YouGov’s coronavirus tracker show that the proportion of Britons who approve of the way the Government has responded to the pandemic has fallen to its lowest level yet.

Just three in ten (30%) think the Government has handled the issue of COVID-19 well, with 63% saying they have handled it badly. This gives a net score of -33, a significant drop from last week’s score of -18.

It is also substantially worse than the previous low point of -21 recorded in mid-August.

Despite these gloomy numbers, most Conservative voters (58%) continue to think the Government has done a good job to date.

Currently 70% of Britons believe the national coronavirus situation to be getting worse, up from 54% last week. As recently as late August this had been a minority view, with only 31% saying so on the 25th of that month.

While the public take a dim view of how the Government has handled the crisis, they don’t absolve themselves of blame either.

A separate YouGov survey conducted on 16 September found that 49% of Britons saying that the public would be more to blame for a second coronavirus wave, compared to 31% who think the Government would primarily be responsible.

See a full breakdown of this week's results here, and see our tracker data here

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