As President Biden settles in at the White House, Californians have a singular message for the new administration: Take care of the coronavirus.
That’s the clear takeaway from a new statewide poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies that asked California voters to choose three priorities from a list of 13 issues. Relief from the virus topped the list — picked by 56% of voters — and was the only priority a majority agreed upon.
Biden’s fellow Democrats overwhelmingly named coronavirus relief as their chief concern, with just over 7 in 10 choosing it, far ahead of other party priorities such as healthcare, climate change and race relations. The virus also topped the list for slightly more than half of the state’s large bloc of nonpartisan voters.
The poll’s findings — along with similar surveys taken elsewhere in recent days — help justify the Biden administration’s intense focus on tackling the coronavirus. Although Biden has taken steps to reverse Trump administration policies on immigration, climate change and healthcare, the president and his top aides have mostly kept the spotlight on the virus, the topic on which voters will probably grade the opening phase of his tenure.
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