Covid-19 Is Taking a Toll on the Capital Region, Recent Regional Poll Reveals

October 20, 2020 – Valley Vision has published the second COVID-19 Resilience Poll this week in partnership with Capital Public Radio. This polling report is focused on understanding experiences, impacts, and attitudes about COVID-19 from residents in our region, and was conducted by the Institute for Social Research at Sacramento State. The COVID-19 Resilience Poll is a demographically representative survey of the eight-county region (Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado, Placer, Yuba, Sutter, Solano, and San Joaquin) and reported a margin of error of +/-3%. You can find the full COVID-19 Resilience Poll here.

“This survey is the second in our series of three COVID-19 polls. This poll, and the others in the series, tracks how the experiences, perceptions, concerns, and hopes of people in the Capital region are being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” noted Evan Schmidt, CEO of Valley Vision. “Having this detailed, data-driven insight about COVID-19’s ongoing impacts on the people and communities we serve is vitally important to our public service mission,” said Jun Reina, executive vice president and general manager of CapRadio, of the partnership with Valley Vision.

The poll results reflect the hardship being felt across the region in the truly hard time we are going through — threats to physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being; income loss and job instability; division in our views about the state of things; and the uncertainties of the future. In most cases, data reported in the first poll, published in July, has continued or worsened in the months since then. For example, nearly half of respondents to this poll said they had lost income as a result of the virus; the same was true in July. 

As well, different communities continue to experience markedly different realities. People of color, younger adults, and those earning lower incomes are more likely to have lost income, to report mental health challenges, and to find it very difficult to have children schooling from home, among other impacts. “These disparities are consistent with the data from the first poll, as well as what’s being reported nationwide about what COVID-19 is causing, and the ways in which it’s worsening existing inequalities in our communities,” noted Shannon Williams, executive director of the Institute for Social Research. 

Political polarization within the region has increased compared with the first poll. Many respondents are dissatisfied with leadership at various levels, and for different reasons, and that dissatisfaction has grown, and is also more likely, now, to extend to the local level, including local governments, local media, and local businesses.

This poll also reveals evidence of fatigue, including decreases in emotional resilience, diminished trust in institutions, and also declines in some precautionary actions related to COVID. These results may point to people’s fatigue with isolating and also to the daily challenges of the added complexities of life during COVID.

The detailed poll results are accessible in several ways:

• As of today, the complete poll report can be downloaded from Valley Vision’s website: https://www.valleyvision.org/resources/the-covid-19-resilience-poll-2-fall-2020/ 
• Ongoing coverage from CapRadio can be found at https://www.capradio.org/resilience
• On October 30, Valley Vision will host a webinar providing an overview of the findings: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HP97WQ2wT5yeEaMliMUqug

Additionally, Valley Vision’s polling partners have each issued their own press releases.

• CapRadio’s is available on their website: https://www.capradio.org/about/press/2020/capradio-and-valley-vision-release-october-2020-covid-19-resilience-poll-report/
• The Institute for Social Research’s is available on the Sacramento State website: https://www.csus.edu/news/articles/2020/10/20/Pandemic-taking-a-toll-on-family-life,-income,-survey-finds.shtml

About Valley Vision: For 25 years Valley Vision has helped governments, businesses, foundations and community groups better understand our region and its people through high quality research. By uncovering common ground facts using scientific opinion polls, focus groups, community needs assessments, best practice reports and other research tools, Valley Vision is a trusted interpreter, commentator, forecaster and work partner for community inspired solutions.

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