Back in 2015, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll about vaccine safety that found no partisan difference in attitudes. Eighty-nine percent of Republicans agreed that vaccines were safe for healthy children, which was slightly more than the 87 percent of Democrats who agreed. Nearly all the resistance to COVID-19 vaccines is coming from Republicans. A recent Gallup poll found that a small majority of Republicans – 56 percent – have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. “What happened right away, when we had stay-at-home orders, is that it created an opportunity for those same claims to resonate in an apocalyptic way,” says Jennifer Reich, Professor of Sociology. “It underscored that anti-government, personal freedom ethos: ‘See – we told you that you’d have no freedom.’”
Partisanship = Death: How Vaccines Became a Polarizing Issue
Governing.com, October 5