Americans think every governor in all 50 states is handling coronavirus 'better than Trump'

The bar may be low, but a survey of Americans found that the majority think every single governor – in all 50 states – is handling the Covid-19 crisis better than president Trump.

Researchers from Harvard, Rutgers and Northeastern conducted a survey of 22,000 people about how they believe the governors in their respective states are handling the Covid-19 pandemic.

While they disagreed on a lot of other things – including when the economy should open up again – the poll shows that every single governor has a higher approval rating than Trump on their handling of the pandemic, from the people in their state.

Trump’s daily Covid-19 conferences seemed like a stream of consciousness until he suggested that everyone 'drink bleach', at which point he stopped holding daily press conferences.

But in the middle of those conferences, he did actually, at some points, repeat approved medical advice and instructed governors to put stay-at-home orders in place. Even so, the governor of South Dakota – Kristi Noem, who has refused to issue stay-at-home-orders – received a higher approval rating than him from the people in her state.

Opinions do vary by state, but roughly 66 per cent of the people surveyed approve of how their governor is handling the pandemic. 83 per cent of those in Ohio, where Governor Michael DeWine locked down early, approved of what he did and 81 per cent of those in Kentucky approved of how governor Andy Beshear handled it.

Trump had the same approval rating in both states - 51 per cent.

Some have pointed out that this pandemic is an opportunity for Trump to make his case for re-election – but his approval ratings in key states, such as Florida and North Carolina, has actually fallen below 50 per cent.

This survey also had some other interesting findings – 88 per cent of respondents indicated that they trusted the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) ‘some’ or ‘a lot’, and only 1 per cent of respondents said that they didn’t trust hospitals and doctors at all.

People also tended to trust their state and city governments more than they trusted the federal government – 81 per cent indicated that this was the case.