75% of Singaporeans feel country is more united than before Covid — Survey

A new survey from Pew Research Center says that in sharp contrast to other countries, three out of four Singaporeans say that the country is more united today than in the period before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Additionally, nine out of ten Singaporeans believe that Singapore has managed the pandemic well and seventy-four per cent of the Singaporeans surveyed said how the country handled the pandemic is a reflection of how strong the political system is.

Meanwhile, in several other countries studied, people feel that their societies have grown to become more divided, Pew Research said in the results of a survey released on Aug 11 (Thursday).

Pew Research conducted the survey among 24,525 people in 19 advanced economies across North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific from Feb 14 to June 3.

Singapore showed the highest number of respondents (72 per cent) who said they believe that being vaccinated is very important when it comes to being a good member of society. 

Sweden (71 per cent) and Spain (70 per cent) showed similar results, while in Poland, only 33 per cent expressed this sentiment.

A majority of respondents in 13 of the countries surveyed said that their country is now more divided than in pre-Covid times.

For the top three countries in this category, in the United States, 81 per cent of respondents said they felt this way, and in the Netherlands, 81 per cent, and in Germany, 78 per cent, responded in the same way. 

The pandemic has had a divisive effect on a sense of national unity across many of the countries surveyed, with a median of 48% saying they think divisions have grown. This includes 77% of Americans who say the U.S. is more divided than before the pandemic. 2/ pic.twitter.com/Z2fkcmTSjN

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) August 27, 2020

Singapore stood out as saying the country is more united today, with the highest number (75 per cent) of respondents, expressing this sentiment. In Sweden, 60 per cent of those polled had this response, and in Malaysia, 58 per cent expressed this as well. 

Eighty-eight per cent of the Singaporeans polled also gave the county a good report concerning how it dealt with the pandemic, while 82 per cent of respondents from Sweden said the same.

In Japan and South Korea, however, 47 per cent and 43 per cent respectively did not approve of how their country managed the pandemic.

Pew Research noted that Singapore had been “largely successful at suppressing the spread of the virus prior to the development of effective vaccines.”

The study showed that in nearly all the nations surveyed, respondents who are supporters of the governing political party were more likely to have a positive view of how the government managed the pandemic and were more likely to say as well that the pandemic had been handled effectively in ways that reflected the strengths of the political system.

/TISG

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