CHARLESTON – A new poll released by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce finds that four out of five voters in West Virginia see COVID-19 and the new Delta variant as a serious issue.
And, more than half of those polled – 57 percent – believe the worst is still yet to come.
“The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce recently sponsored a statewide poll of voters to determine if opposition to efforts being made to end the pandemic was shared by more than a small, vocal minority," State Chamber President Steve Roberts said. "It was not.”
Roberts
National Republican polling firm North Star Opinion Research conducted the statewide survey.
Other nuggets from the survey include:
* 69 percent believe local school boards, and not the West Virginia Legislature should make decisions on how to keep children safe in school.
* 67 percent think employers should make decisions on whether employees should get vaccinated as opposed to only 18 percent who think the state Legislature should.
* 64 percent are very or somewhat concerned that if they get seriously ill, that there will not be any hospital beds available.
* 51 percent believe that hospitals in their area are reaching full capacity, while only 28 percent believe there is still capacity.
“The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce is committed to helping businesses and employers of the Mountain State bring an end to this pandemic and normalize the nation’s economy,” Roberts said. “To that goal, we support the decisions of employers throughout the state to utilize their best efforts to protect their employees while maintaining the rights of protected classes through reasonable accommodation.”
The survey of 600 voters was conducted by live callers from a sample selected randomly from the list of registered voters throughout West Virginia. All respondents confirmed that they are registered to vote. Calls were conducted September 7-9. Calling quotas were set by gender, age and county according to the number of voters in each county. The margin of error for the full sample is 4 percent.
