Introduction

The article shows various graphs comparing how Americans view Biden’s handling of the pandemic to that of Trump. Americans answered questions regarding the following subjects: Presidential response; their feelings about infections; and feelings about the economy.

This assignment focuses on data concerning the following question: Do Americans approve of Biden’s response to the coronavirus crisis?

Article Link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/

Initialization and package inclusion

The first block sets this project’s configurations and include packages for the rest of the markdown file.

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)

# Packages listings

# For str_replace function
library(stringr)

# Basic data frame operations
library(tidyverse)

## ── Attaching packages ─────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse 1.3.1 ──

## ✓ ggplot2 3.3.5     ✓ purrr   0.3.4
## ✓ tibble  3.1.3     ✓ dplyr   1.0.7
## ✓ tidyr   1.1.3     ✓ forcats 0.5.1
## ✓ readr   2.0.1

## ── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
## x dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
## x dplyr::lag()    masks stats::lag()

Load CSV into a data_frame variable

# Load the CSV from Github
data_frame = read.table(file="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cliftonleesps/607_acq_mgt/main/covid-19-polls-master/covid_approval_polls_adjusted.csv", header=TRUE,sep=",")

Subsetting

This block performs a couple of basic data frame operations:

Filters out observations
Removes unnecessary columns
Reorders columns

# Since we only want to know about Biden's approval rating, we'll filter out observations where he is not the President
data_frame <- filter(data_frame, subject == 'Biden')

# Remove a few unnecessary columns
data_frame <- select(data_frame, party,enddate, pollster, samplesize,approve_adjusted,disapprove_adjusted)

# Sort by Poll Date, party
data_frame <- arrange(data_frame, enddate, party)

# Reorder the columns
data_frame <- data_frame[,c("enddate","pollster","samplesize","party","approve_adjusted","disapprove_adjusted")]

Transformations

The next block further helps the reader by renaming observations to more meaningful values. Any explanation of values can be retrieved via their Github page listed below.

Link: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/covid-19-polls

# Map party key value pairs
data_frame$party <- str_replace(string=data_frame$party, pattern="^D$", replacement="Democrat")
data_frame$party <- str_replace(string=data_frame$party, pattern="^R$", replacement="Republican")
data_frame$party <- str_replace(string=data_frame$party, pattern="^I$", replacement="Independent")
data_frame$party <- str_replace(string=data_frame$party, pattern="^all$", replacement="All")

# Transform participants by rounding them to integers
data_frame$samplesize <- round(data_frame$samplesize)

# Round the adjusted approval/disapproval percentage columns to 1 significant digit
data_frame$approve_adjusted <- round(data_frame$approve_adjusted, digits = 1)
data_frame$disapprove_adjusted <- round(data_frame$disapprove_adjusted, digits = 1)


# Rename headers for readability
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, Party = party)
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, Participants = samplesize )
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, Pollster = pollster )
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, "Approval Pct" = approve_adjusted)
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, "Disapproval Pct" = disapprove_adjusted)
data_frame <- rename(data_frame, "Poll Date"= enddate)


# Show the final subset
head(data_frame, n=10)

##    Poll Date                    Pollster Participants       Party Approval Pct
## 1  1/22/2021 Harris Insights & Analytics          941         All         64.7
## 2  1/23/2021                       Ipsos          504         All         66.1
## 3  1/26/2021            Echelon Insights         1006         All         59.5
## 4  1/26/2021                      YouGov         1500         All         57.3
## 5  1/26/2021                      YouGov          477    Democrat         86.9
## 6  1/26/2021                      YouGov          645 Independent         52.5
## 7  1/26/2021                      YouGov          369  Republican         28.8
## 8  1/29/2021                    IBD/TIPP         1261         All         57.9
## 9   2/1/2021       Quinnipiac University         1075         All         60.8
## 10  2/1/2021             Morning Consult         1986         All         60.7
##    Disapproval Pct
## 1             30.3
## 2             29.9
## 3             23.0
## 4             25.4
## 5              2.3
## 6             22.3
## 7             51.7
## 8             24.8
## 9             29.1
## 10            30.1

Conclusions

The answer to the central question is yes, a majority of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the corona virus epidemic. His latest poll numbers among independents remains 57%, 25% for Republicans and 92% for Democrats.

How Americans View Biden’s Response To The Coronavirus Crisis