Nationscape Insights
Views of the American Electorate Surrounding the 2020 Election
Between July 2019 and January 2021, the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey asked hundreds of thousands of Americans about the biggest issues in the 2020 election — including the economy, guns, healthcare, and climate change. The survey also asked detailed questions to learn more about voters, nuances in their positions, and whether those views changed over time.
Nationscape Insights is a featured project of Democracy Fund Voter Study Group and UCLA, in partnership with USA TODAY, which provided steady coverage of survey findings as they unfolded. Our interactive graphics delve into this large-scale study of the American electorate, inviting you to explore breakdowns by geography, demographics, and over time.
- Education
- Ensure that all students can graduate from state colleges debt free
- Provide tax-funded vouchers to be used for private or religious schools
- Allow the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools and courthouses
- Environment
- Enact a Green New Deal
- Make a large-scale investment in technology to protect the environment
- Cap carbon emissions to combat climate change
- Remove barriers to domestic oil and gas drilling
- Gun Policy
- Require background checks for all gun purchases
- Limit gun magazines to 10 bullets
- Create a public government registry of gun ownership
- Ban assault rifles
- Ban all guns
- Health Care
- Enact Medicare-for-All
- Provide government-run health insurance to all Americans
- Provide the option to purchase government-run insurance to all Americans
- Subsidize health insurance for lower income people not receiving Medicare or Medicaid
- Never permit abortion
- Permit abortion in cases other than rape, incest, or when the woman's life is in danger
- Require a waiting period and ultrasound before an abortion can be obtained
- Allow employers to decline coverage of abortions in insurance plans
- Immigration
- Create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought here as children
- Create a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants
- Shift from a more family-based to a more merit-based immigration system
- Deport all undocumented immigrants
- Separate children from their parents when parents can be prosecuted for illegal entry into the U.S.
- Build a wall on the southern U.S. border
- Ban people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States
- Labor/Employment
- Raise the minimum wage to $15/hour
- Require companies to provide 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for employees
- Limit trade with other countries
- Allow people to work in unionized workplaces without paying union dues
- Guarantee jobs for all Americans
- Military
- Allow transgender people to serve in the military
- Reduce the size of the U.S. military
- Equity and Justice
- Grant reparations payments to the descendants of slaves
- Legalize marijuana
- Taxes
- Raise taxes on families making over $250,000
- Cut taxes for families making less than $100,000 per year
- Eliminate the estate tax
Geographic Trends
This section examines attitudes on the selected policy at the state and congressional district level. Click on “State” and then select a state below to see state-level data. For a more detailed breakdown, click “Congressional District” and hover over the region of the state you are interested in. You can read more about the data modeling approach used to estimate congressional district-level support here.
Displayed values are the percent of a given group who agree with the selected policy. When “Dem vs. Rep” is selected, displayed values are the difference in agreement levels between Democrats and Republicans. At the congressional district level, the estimates are based on multi-level regression and post-stratification weighting. Areas with insufficient sample sizes are displayed as missing. As more data is collected, estimates for these areas may become available.
Demographic Trends
This section explores attitudes on the selected policy among demographic and political groups by age, education, gender, party affiliation, and race. Select demographic and political groups to see what these groups think about the selected policy.
Displayed values are the percent of a group who agree with the selected policy (horizontal axis) plotted against the percent who express either agreement or disagreement (vertical axis). The size of each circle represents the size of the identified group within the US population.
Trends Over Time
This section describes attitudes on the selected policy over time as well as level of agreement by party affiliation. Select points along the trend line to see estimates for a specific week’s data.
Displayed values are the levels of agreement and disagreement with the selected policy over time. Each dot represents an estimate based on data collected over a six-day period starting at the displayed date. The smoothed line represents a summary of the trend over time. When “agreement by party” is selected, only the levels of agreement are displayed.
Source and Method
The Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey was conducted online and interviewed approximately 6,250 Americans each week over 80 weeks leading up to the 2020 election and the weeks following the election. The survey was fielded by Lucid, a leading market research platform used to generate representative samples of the population.
The study was led by UCLA political scientists Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck. The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group is led by Director Alicia Kolar Prevost, Research Director Robert Griffin, Research Assistant Mayesha Quasem, Senior Research Advisor John Sides, and Democracy Fund’s Managing Director of Communications and Network Lauren Strayer.
This data was updated weekly throughout the 2020 election cycle by UCLA, the Voter Study Group research team, and USA TODAY.