Social Distancing Plummeted In Lead-Up To Fall Surge, Survey Finds

While Democrats remain more likely than Republicans to support new measures aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19, a majority of U.S. adults from both political parties now agree more steps are needed to fight the pandemic, according to the latest results from a large ongoing survey.

"The bad news here is that we let our guard down in the pandemic and partisan differences remain," says David Lazer, a professor of political science at Northeastern University who is helping lead the survey. "The good news here is, there is a collective desire to do what's necessary to keep the disease at bay."

Lazer and his colleagues at Harvard, Rutgers and Northwestern universities have been surveying about 20,000 U.S. adults nationwide about the pandemic, every month since April.

In one of two new reports from the survey, the researchers analyzed the responses of 139,230 Americans across all 50 states. They found social distancing and other efforts to try to prevent the virus from spreading "decreased dramatically" over the summer and into the fall, the report concludes.