57 percent of Republicans say coronavirus death toll is ‘acceptable’

A majority of Republicans said that the number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. — now topping 176,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University — is “acceptable,” according to a poll released Sunday.

A CBS News-YouGov poll determined that 57 percent of Republican respondents said the U.S. death toll for COVID-19 was “acceptable,” while 43 percent said it was “unacceptable.” Republicans were the only partisan group of which a majority of voters said the number of deaths was acceptable. 

Among Democrats, 10 percent said the coronavirus death toll in the U.S. was acceptable, while 90 percent said it was unacceptable. For independents, 33 percent labeled the death toll as acceptable, and 67 percent called it unacceptable. 

Republican respondents also differed among all voters on whether the U.S.’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is “going well,” with 73 percent agreeing with that assessment. A total of 38 percent of all voters said it was going well.

Most voters — 62 percent — said the pandemic handling is “going badly,” but only 27 percent of Republicans agreed. 

Republican participants were also more likely than all voters to say that the U.S. death toll is actually lower than what’s being reported, at 64 percent. Overall, 36 percent of all voters supported that statement.

A total of 44 percent of all respondents thought the death toll is actually higher than reported, while 18 percent of Republicans concurred. 

The CBS News-YouGov poll surveyed 2,226 U.S. registered voters between Aug. 19 and 21. The margin of error was 2.4 percentage points.

The U.S. COVID-19 death toll has reached at least 176,579 fatalities, or almost 22 percent of the world’s reported deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 

The U.S. has documented more than 5.6 million cases, amounting to about a quarter of the world’s reported cases.