Poll: In U.S., a small retreat from social distancing

Nearly three-quarters of Americans (74%) say that they have avoided small gatherings of people in the past week, but this figure has gradually declined by 10 percentage points from late-March to late-April. The decline in the percentage avoiding small gatherings has been accompanied by a similar increase in the percentage saying they haven’t considered doing so, from 9% to 17%…

Compared with their peaks in late-March, the 74% of independents and 60% of Republicans avoiding small gatherings are both down by double digits. The drop is particularly steep among Republicans whose 16- percentage-point decline in avoiding small gatherings nearly brings them back to the level they reported in Gallup’s first measure, in mid-March.

Democrats have always been the most likely to avoid small gatherings while Republicans have been the least likely, but the 26-point gap between them is the widest yet. Independents have consistently fallen somewhere in between.