Pew Research Center's

Americans across the partisan divide have drastically different opinions about Trump's and Biden's public statements since polls closed Nov. 3. Majorities within each party approve of the post-election messaging their party's candidate has been delivering and disapprove of the opponent's message. These opinions are particularly common among Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, about nine-in-ten of whom say Biden has been delivering the right message and Trump the wrong one.

But the survey, conducted Nov. 18-29 as part of the Center's

Half of U.S. adults know that in modern history, there has not been a losing presidential candidate who has declined to publicly concede prior to Inauguration Day. Again, however, there is a large gap between the parties: Roughly two-thirds of Democrats (64%) correctly answer this question, compared with 36% of Republicans. Republicans, on the other hand, are more likely to say that there has been a losing candidate who has not conceded in modern history (23%, vs. 7% of Democrats) or that they are not sure whether this has happened (40% vs. 29%).

Majorities of both parties say their most-used news sources covered the election well, but Democrats are much more likely to praise the media in general

After an election that

A majority of Americans (60%) say made-up news and information had a major impact on the 2020 presidential election, though Democrats and Republicans both overwhelmingly see it as targeting their own party (see

In addition to the election, the survey also gauged attention to the coronavirus outbreak as the number of COVID-19 cases surged throughout the country. The share of U.S. adults who were paying close attention to the pandemic did not change between mid-October through late November, with 37% following the outbreak very closely. The partisan gap that increased throughout the spring and summer also remains, with about half of Democrats (47%) following COVID-19 news very closely, compared with 28% of Republicans.

Americans overall are about evenly split on whether the outbreak has been overblown (34%) or underplayed (30%), but large partisan gaps on this question persist. Republicans (58%) are much more likely than Democrats (13%) to say that the pandemic has been exaggerated, though the share of Republicans who take this position has fallen by 5 percentage points in recent weeks.

Relatedly, about twice as many Democrats (45%) as Republicans (21%) say they greatly changed their Thanksgiving plans this year due to the outbreak (see Chapter 4).