How COVID-19 affects the 2020 race: People who know someone infected with coronavirus are more likely to support Biden

• According to Insider polling from August to October, experiences with COVID-19 affect how some voters lean for president.
• Those respondents who know of someone close who died of COVID-19 are more likely to support Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
• People who have personally been diagnosed with the virus were more likely to support President Donald Trump.
• In general, likely voters whose friends or family has had any exposure to the virus are more likely to support Biden over Trump.
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COVID-19 cases continue to soar across the nation, and with less than a week until Election Day, the Trump campaign may be in serious trouble.

According to recent polling from Insider and SurveyMonkey, COVID-19 diagnoses among friends and family of survey respondents were linked to higher levels of support for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential race in the survey sample. Over fifty percent of likely voters from the surveys told Insider that they personally know someone who has been diagnosed with the virus.

This breakdown comes from an aggregation of nine polls taken between August 8 and October 12. All told, the polls combined to 10,077 respondents, 8,623 of whom indicated they were registered to vote and 8,321 of whom said they would likely do so. Respondents were asked about their intentions of who they would vote for in November as well as a number of other questions.

The chart below shows the difference between the margin of support for President Donald Trump or Biden among the given subset of respondents and the overall margin of support among likely voters as a whole: 

Trump has repeatedly made contradictory and false statements about the virus since its first confirmed US case in late January.  While he assured the country that COVID-19 was under control and would disappear, he privately told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that the virus was "deadly stuff." 

According to the Center for Disease Control, the coronavirus has killed over 225,000 Americans and has infected just over 8.7 million in the US. Some groups, such as the Black and Native American communities, are have been disproportionately impacted by virus. The CDC estimates that Black Americans are 4.7 times more like to be hospitalized from the virus and twice as likely to die from it.

Those who have been infected by the virus were slightly more likely to support Trump, while those who had had a friend or family member diagnosed were liklier to back Biden. Conservative, Trump-voting states have seen a major uptick in COVID-19 cases since June. According to the Washington Post in mid-October, nearly 70% of new cases and nearly 75% of new deaths have occurred in Trump-supporting states.

But while those with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis may be more supportive of Trump, responses to Insider's surveys suggest that people who personally know someone who died of the coronavirus are more likely to side with Biden.

SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Polling data collected 1,150 respondents August 7,  1,106 respondents on August 11, 1,128 respondents August 21-22, 1,073 respondents August 29, 1,161 respondents September 4, 1,107 respondents September 15, 1,017 respondents September 18, 1,122 respondents September 28, 1,176 respondents October 5, and 1,130 respondents on October 12. All polls carried approximately a 3 percentage point margin of error individually.