"According to a CNN poll released this week, nearly three-quarters of Democrats said the worst of the crisis is still ahead of us..."

"... while only about a quarter of Republicans said the same. This marked a 15 percentage-point drop among Democrats since CNN last asked the question in April, and a 44-point drop among Republicans. A YouGov/Economist poll also found a similar divide this week; 58 percent of Democrats said the pandemic is going to get worse compared with only 20 percent of Republicans...."

FiveThirtyEight reports.

Why should predictions about what a virus will do have so much to do with political orientation? I might be missing something, but I see 2 types of reasoning:

1. Optimism or pessimism is a psychological orientation that is more fundamental than political affiliation. It affects which party you feel drawn to and how you see the virus going in the future. Pessimists picture things going wrong, so they want more help from the government, and the Democrats are there to offer to help. Optimists think they can make good things happen and the Republicans offer to get government out of the way.

2. A Republican is in the White House, and Democrats don't trust him and assume he's screwing things up, so they're more likely to picture bad things happening in the future. There's also wishful thinking: They want him to fail, and more death and sickness is something that — in a perverse and unacknowledged way — they want. Republicans are the opposite. They're more able to trust Trump, and the ordinary wishful thinking that the virus will go away aligns nicely with the hope that Trump will triumph.