Poll shows Illinoisans back Pritzker
More than three-quarters of state voters support stay-at-home order; new record set for daily testing
Local residents help set up a COVID-19 treatment tent in Carmi in southeastern Illinois. (Shutterstock)
By Ted Cox
The state reported a new record for COVID-19 tests conducted on a single day on Sunday, while a poll of voters across Illinois showed overwhelming support for the governor and his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Capitol Fax publisher Rich Miller revealed the results of the poll, conducted along with We Ask America, in his Sunday column in the Chicago Sun-Times. Coming two days after hundreds of protesters called for an end to Gov. Pritzker’s statewide stay-at-home order outside the Capitol in Springfield and the Thompson Center in Chicago — where they were confronted by counterprosters from the Illinois Nurses Association — the poll found that more than three-quarters of the 800 voters polled supported the order.
Some 71 percent of voters backed Pritzker’s handling of the coronavirus crisis overall, with just 23 percent opposed, but the results were even more resounding in support of the stay-at-home order, with 77 percent in favor and just 18 percent opposed.
Also Sunday, Pritzker reported a record-shattering 19,417 COVID-19 tests in a single day, almost double his stated goal of 10,000 reached only nine days before. That confirmed 2,994 new cases of the disease statewide, just behind the new one-day high of 3,137 new cases set Friday, but state officials also found something to cheer in the 15.4 percent positive rate, which with more extensive testing has persistently dropped from the 21 percent rate seen earlier in the outbreak. The state has confirmed a total of 61,499 cases.
The one-day death total dropped well below 100, at 63, bringing the state toll to 2,618.
Hospitalization rates remained steady, and the state was so far below capacity for ventilator use that Pritzker announced he’d be returning 100 ventilators to California so that they “could be sent to someone else who may need them.”
State and national polls found overwhelming support for mediation efforts against the coronavirus, including stay-at-home orders and social distancing. New York Times columnist David Brooks cited a national ABC News/Ispos poll finding that 98 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans back social-distancing rules, while a Pew survey found that an equal 89 percent of Democrats and Republicans back the bipartisan relief packages passed by Congress. Brooks said that showed U.S. citizens are more united than is commonly perceived politically.
Back in Illinois, however, the We Ask America/Capitol Fax poll found President Trump under water in support, with 48 percent backing his response to the pandemic while 49 percent disprove.
Miller pointed out that divide was pronounced in the outer suburbs where Republicans suffered defeats in the 2018 midterm election. “According to the poll,” he wrote, “52.5 percent of collar-county voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak; 47 percent approved.”
By contrast, the collar counties approved of Pritzker’s handling of the pandemic by 76.5 percent to 17 percent. Some 81 percent backed the stay-at-home order, with the same 17 percent opposed. A majority of voters in the collar counties worried that states would lift the mediation efforts too soon, 57 percent, while less than a quarter, 22 percent, worried they’d lift them too slowly. That was even higher than the plurality of 48 percent statewide who worry about orders being lifted too soon, with just 29 percent saying they believe the orders are being lifted too slowly.