Americans have become more pessimistic about the prospects for a quick pandemic recovery, especially in the states of the US South and west where coronavirus cases have spiked, according to a new poll for the Financial Times. Almost half of the likely voters, about 49 percent, said they believed the outbreak would get worse in their community over the next month, a sharp increase from the 35 percent who said the pandemic would worsen when asked a month ago. Only 24 percent said they believed it would improve.

At the same time, the monthly survey of likely voters for the FT and the Peter G Peterson Foundation found that the share of Americans who believed the US economy would “fully recover” in a year dropped from 42 percent to 37 percent. Those saying a recovery would take a year or more rose from 58 percent to 63 percent.

The FT-Peterson poll, conducted at the end of June, showed the spike in pessimism was particularly pronounced in the south and west, which have experienced a sharp increase in coronavirus cases after reopening their economies in May. In the south, 56 percent of likely voters said coronavirus would get worse in their community in the next month, as did 59 percent in the west, compared with just 29 percent in the north-east, which bore the brunt of the early stages of the  US outbreak but has largely been spared in the more recent spike.

Voters increasingly believe the pandemic will worsen

The north-east was also the only region that showed little change in its economic outlook; the portion of voters in the south who think the recovery will take longer than a year rose 6 percentage points over a month ago while the increase in the west was 8 points. The results underscore the challenge facing President Donald Trump, who had hoped his handling of the economy would serve as the linchpin for his re­ election campaign against Democratic rival Joe Eiden.

Most national opinion polls show the former US vice-president with a double­ digit lead over the incumbent, whose approval ratings have suffered due to his handling of the pandemic and civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd. The trends have been particularly noticeable in the south and west, where states