Seventy-five percent of Americans say strengthening the economy should be the top policy priority for President Joe Biden and Congress to address this year, according to a new Pew Research Center poll, higher than any other priority the survey tested.
At the bottom of the list of 21 different policy priorities is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, with just 26% of respondents saying Biden and Congress should address it this year — a drop from 2021 and 2022, when it was near the top in the poll.
The Pew survey comes ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, and it shows broad agreement that strengthening the economy should be priority, with 84% of Republicans and 68% of Democrat saying it should be.
But there’s disagreement on dealing with immigration (70% of Republicans said it should be a priority, versus 37% of Democrats), on dealing with climate change (59% of Democrats vs. 13% of Republicans) and on addressing issues around race (49% of Democrats vs. 13% of Republicans).
The online Pew poll was conducted Jan. 18-24 of 5,152 adults, and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 1.7 percentage points.
