The Growing Partisan Divide On Vaccines

With the increase in measles cases and substantial public awareness of the situation, several new polls have explored attitudes about vaccines. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and YouGov released polls in April, building on data Gallup and others have collected over a long period of time.

Only 6% in the KFF poll had not heard about the increase measles cases in recent years, while 56% had. Sixty-three percent said they had heard or read that MMR vaccines had been “proven to cause autism in children,” a response virtually unchanged from their 2023 poll.

KFF and YouGov both asked whether people believed these reports. Three percent in the KFF poll said the autism claim was definitely true and 20% probably true. Compared to 2023, the responses have been stable, but there were partisan differences. Ten percent of Democrats and 35% of Republicans said the claim that the vaccine causes autism was definitely or probably true. In YouGov’s poll, 8% said the statement “vaccines have been shown to cause autism” was definitely true while 15% said probably true. When Gallup asked in July 2024 if certain vaccines “cause” autism, 13% said they did, 36% did not, with 51% unsure.

In 2001, 6% told Gallup that vaccines were more dangerous than the diseases they were designed to prevent. That was 20% in 2024. In three polls before 2024, roughly equal small shares of Democrats and Republicans said vaccines were more dangerous. In 2024, however, there was a 26-point gap between partisans.

Eighty-three percent in the KFF poll, including 97% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans, said they were confident the MMR vaccines are safe. In a broader YouGov question, 71% said the benefits of childhood vaccines outweighed the risks, including 89% of Democrats and 67% of Republicans. There was a larger partisan gap on whether the science on childhood vaccines was well-established or needed more debate, with 87% of Democrats but just 57% of Republicans saying it was well established.

Gallup shows a significant decline in views about whether childhood vaccines should be required, driven in recent years by Republicans. In 1991, 81% said government should require parents to have their children vaccinated against measles. That’s now 51%. Republicans were also much less likely than Democrats to say it was very important to get kids vaccinated (93% to 52%). In Pew questions in 2019 and 2020, Democrats and Republicans broadly agreed that healthy children should be required to get vaccines, but in 2023, Republicans sharply departed from this view.

When YouGov asked how much trust and confidence people had in the federal government when it comes to vaccines, 51% said a great deal or a fair amount. High confidence was 63% for the CDC, 60% for the NIH, and 69% for scientific researchers. Eighty-one percent had high confidence in their family doctor. Thirty percent had this level of confidence in RFK, Jr. (while 43% had none at all), and 27% in Trump. Thirty-eight percent had high confidence in pharmaceutical companies, and 25% in the news media.

In the YouGov survey, 51% said they normally keep up with vaccines, but 36% said they have delayed or skipped some. When asked why they had delayed, skipped, or decided not to get vaccines, the top responses were lack of trust in the pharmaceutical companies (15%) or the government (14%). Republicans were more likely than Democrats to volunteer that they don’t like being told what to do, though those percentages were small.

What do the striking new partisan differences on virtually every aspect of this debate mean? Misinformation could play a role, but there are other possible explanations. In the YouGov poll, twice as many Republicans as Democrats said not thinking they would get sick was a reason for not getting vaccines. When asked about 10 different vaccines, more Democrats than Republicans said they had had each one, with the exception of shingles where there was no difference.

Republicans may have a higher risk tolerance generally, but that doesn’t fully explain the large gaps. Republicans have long been more skeptical of government than Democrats. For them and others, the government’s COVID policies exacerbated those feelings, which now may inform vaccine views. It is also possible that like so many things in the polls today, the new divisions are simply markers of political allegiance to an administration that includes some prominent vaccine skeptics.