Demonstrators live-stream a protest in Chicago on June 1, 2020. (Javage Logan/Xinhua via Getty)
Social media platforms are important for political and social activists. But while most Americans believe these platforms are an effective tool for raising awareness and creating sustained movements, majorities also believe they are a distraction and lull people into believing they are making a difference when they’re not, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Overall, eight-in-ten Americans say social media platforms are very (31%) or somewhat (49%) effective for raising public awareness about political or social issues, according to the survey of U.S. adults conducted July 13-19. A similar share (77%) believes these platforms are at least somewhat effective for creating sustained social movements.
Smaller shares – though still majorities – say social media are at least somewhat effective in getting elected officials to pay attention to issues (65%), influencing policy decisions (63%) or changing people’s minds about political or social issues (58%).
Americans have little confidence in technology companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 presidential election. Above, workers in Facebook’s “war room” in Menlo Park, California, in 2018. (Noah Berger/AFP via Getty Images)
Three-quarters of U.S. adults say technology companies have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 presidential election, but only around a quarter say they are very or somewhat confident in these firms to do so, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 27-Aug. 2. The survey comes as Facebook and other major tech companies make efforts to limit political misinformation ahead of the November election.
Since 2018, majorities of Americans have said that tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google have a responsibility to prevent misuse of their platforms to influence elections. However, the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say tech companies have this responsibility has declined since January, from 75% to 64%. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, an overwhelming majority continues to say tech companies are responsible for preventing misuse of their platforms (85% today, up from 81% in January).
There is a much wider partisan gap on whether social media companies should label posts by elected officials and ordinary users as inaccurate or misleading, according to a separate survey conducted by the Center in June. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say social media companies should do this kind of labeling.
A voter drops off a mail-in ballot in a collection box in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Aug. 25, 2020. (Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Many Americans are concerned about voting in November amid the coronavirus pandemic and worries over the U.S. Postal Service’s capacity to deliver ballots on time. Democrats, however, are more concerned than Republicans about the ease of voting and the broader integrity of the election. Public attitudes about several voting-related policy proposals – from automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote to expanding the availability of “no excuse” early and absentee voting – also differ sharply by partisan affiliation.
With less than two months before Election Day, here’s a look at Americans’ views about voting in 2020 and how these views differ by party, based on Pew Research Center surveys and analyses conducted this year.
The coronavirus outbreak has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading early this year, surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era.
In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of monthly Census Bureau data. The number living with parents grew to 26.6 million, an increase of 2.6 million from February. The number and share of young adults living with their parents grew across the board for all major racial and ethnic groups, men and women, and metropolitan and rural residents, as well as in all four main census regions. Growth was sharpest for the youngest adults (ages 18 to 24) and for White young adults.
A woman walks past a closed shop in London on June 28. (Hollie Adams/Getty Images)
Public attitudes about the economy have turned bleak in much of the world as the coronavirus outbreak continues to affect daily life, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this summer in 14 nations in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Assessments of national economies have seen swift downturns in many countries, and few see improvements anytime soon amid what the International Monetary Fund calls a “crisis like no other.”
Overall, a median of only 31% of adults across the surveyed nations assess their country’s current economic situation as good, while 68% say conditions are bad.
In 10 of the countries surveyed – including all of those surveyed in North America and the Asia-Pacific region – majorities consider the current economic situation bad.
In Europe, attitudes are mixed. Generally, Northern Europeans surveyed have more positive assessments, with a majority of Danes, Swedes and Dutch rating their country’s economic condition positively. Germans are split (51% good, 47% bad). In the rest of the European countries surveyed – Belgium, the UK, France, Spain and Italy – large majorities rate economic conditions negatively.
The results of U.S. Senate elections increasingly are aligned with states’ party preferences in presidential elections – a trend that could have major implications in this year’s battle for control of the Senate.
The vast majority of the regular and special Senate elections held since 2012 – 122 of 139 – have been won by candidates who belonged to or were aligned with the party that won that state’s most recent presidential race, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of election results going back to 1980. That represents a marked contrast with prior years: As recently as 2006, nearly a third of Senate contests (10 out of 33) were won by candidates of different parties than their state’s most recent presidential pick.
Even in the 2017-18 election cycle, which represented a bit of a departure from this recent pattern, there were only eight such “mismatches” out of 34 regular and special Senate elections – all Democratic victories in states Donald Trump had carried in 2016. (The election data we used came mostly from the Federal Election Commission, supplemented by information from the U.S. House Clerk’s office.)
Remittances to several Latin American nations with close migrant ties to the United States declined sharply in the first half of 2020 – especially in April, when much of the U.S. was locked down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from their national central banks.
Across the six countries included in the analysis – Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico – remittances were 17% (or $981.2 million) lower in April 2020 than in April 2019. Most of these countries rely on the U.S. for the vast majority of their remittances. These nations also are the birthplaces of roughly eight-in-ten of the 20 million Latino immigrants who reside in the U.S.
Some Latin American countries were hit harder than others by this spring’s decline in remittances, or the money sent by migrants to their origin nations. El Salvador experienced a 40.0% drop in remittances in April 2020 compared with April 2019, the largest decline among the six nations analyzed. Remittances to Colombia declined by 38.5% during this time, the second-sharpest drop.
Many Christian traditions disapprove of premarital sex. And even though Christians in the United States hold less permissive views than religiously unaffiliated Americans about dating and sex, most say it’s acceptable in at least some circumstances for consenting adults to have sex outside of marriage, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
Half of Christians say casual sex – defined in the survey as sex between consenting adults who are not in a committed romantic relationship – is sometimes or always acceptable. Six-in-ten Catholics (62%) take this view, as do 56% of Protestants in the historically Black tradition, 54% of mainline Protestants and 36% of evangelical Protestants.
Among those who are religiously unaffiliated, meanwhile, the vast majority (84%) say casual sex is sometimes or always acceptable, including roughly nine-in-ten atheists (94%) and agnostics (95%) who say this. The religiously unaffiliated, also known as “nones,” are those who describe themselves, religiously, as atheist, agnostic or as “nothing in particular.”
After the Democratic and Republican party conventions, the next big events on the U.S. political calendar are the debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which has sponsored the events since 1988, has scheduled three debates between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, on Sept. 29, Oct. 15 and Oct. 22, and one debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris on Oct. 7.
Although the debates have long been criticized on both substantive and stylistic grounds, they remain a major part of the way Americans elect their presidents. Here are five important things to know before the first debate kicks off next month in Cleveland.
Scientists are held in high esteem by most Americans, with public confidence in scientists outpacing that for other prominent groups, but Black adults are significantly less likely than White adults to share that view.
While views of scientists generally tilt positive, there’s a 14-point gap between the shares of White and Black adults who say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists (41% vs. 27%). And while most adults in both groups have at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists, Black adults are about twice as likely as White adults to say they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public interest (21% vs. 11%).
U.S. Hispanics rate scientists about the same as White adults do, expressing more confidence in them than Black adults do.
