(ConservativeFreePress.com) – A new national survey from the General Social Survey by the University of Chicago’s NORC showed that there was a 48 percent drop in the number of Americans that have a “great deal” of confidence in science from 2018 to 2021.
The new poll showed that 39 percent of Americans had a “great deal” of confidence and that there were partisan divides as to how much trust there was in science, with Republicans’ confidence in science having reached an all-time low. The partisan divide when it came to science first started appearing more strongly during the pandemic, when many Republicans appeared to have less confidence than Democrats did in science.
NORC Deputy Director Jennifer Benz told the Associated Press, that when one looks at the general trend for the overall public the situation does not appear as dramatic, but that when one looks into people’s political affiliations there is a very clear divide and a “stark downturn and polarization.”
In 2022, 53 percent of Democratic respondents expressed a “great deal” of confidence, while only 22 percent of Republicans expressed the same. In 2018, 45 percent of Republicans trusted science.
Many Republican politicians during the pandemic had spoken up about their doubts about how effective the vaccine and lockdown policies were in reducing the spread and severity of the virus. In 2021, a Kaiser study found that it was three times more likely that an unvaccinated individual would be a Republican and not a Democrat.
The General Social Survey, released last month took place from May 5 to Dec. 20, 2022, and included 3,544 American adults. The margin of error was calculated at 3 percentage points.
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