Among very conservative voters, the situation was flipped: Sixty-five percent said they were more worried about reopening too slowly. But is that because of a concern over the economy, or is it because of a simple frustration with the shutdown itself?

In a Fox News poll released last week, strongly conservative voters were in fact less likely than others to say they worried that the response to the virus could cause a recession. Most did not say they were “very worried” about this, whereas among the rest of the electorate, more than three in five said they were very concerned about the prospect of a recession.

So the backlash may be less about fears that the response will cause economic harm, and more about a sense of outrage at an infringement on liberties.

“If there’s a statement that I think I’m hearing the most, it’s: ‘Tell us what to do and trust us to do it, don’t try to make us do it by law,’” Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster and senior strategist for the Trafalgar Group, said of the protesters. “It’s that whole axiom of, If you would trade liberty for security, you deserve neither.”

With President Trump publicly lamenting the need to keep the economy shuttered, the responsibility to lay out restrictions and articulate the justification for them has fallen largely to governors.

Most people express general appreciation: Governors’ approval ratings are up virtually across the board. But in states with an already intense partisan divide — like Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina — a small, vociferous protest movement is arising.

On Fox News, Tucker Carlson has called Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan “authoritarian” for placing strict limits on public activity in response to the virus, which has hit the state hard. When Garrett Soldano, a right-wing activist, spoke recently via live stream to his Facebook group, Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, he focused more on principles of liberty than on economics. “Keeping healthy people at home is tyranny,” he said.