Non-vaxxers may not be anti-vaxxers

Non-vaxxers may not be anti-vaxxers

G. Elliott Morris

Data journalist

Much has been made of the Americans who choose not to get their covid-19 vaccines. The disproportionately Republican group was led early on by a president who played down the virus, which may have caused complacency among his followers about the need for full-scale inoculations, and by aligned media personalities who also resisted vaccinations. Some still remain opposed. According to The Economist’s weekly polling with YouGov, nearly 40% of Republican-leaning adults said last autumn that they would not get a vaccine when it became available. The proportion firmly opposed is now closer to 30%. Over the same period, the share of Democratic holdouts has fallen from roughly 15% to 5%.

Yet little attention has been paid either to political independents or to people who are “unsure” about vaccinations. As our report from Arkansas this week shows, vaccine hesitancy can have diverse and long-term causes, and firm opposition is different from simple reluctance. Political leanings are not the only factor. Throughout the pandemic, YouGov’s numbers have revealed that independents are roughly as resistant as Republicans to getting vaccines, yet many more are “not sure” about the shot, rather than stalwartly opposed. As of July 27th, 14% of independents said they were undecided on the vaccine, compared with 13% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats. Over the past month, political independents make up 25% of all anti-vaxxers, and a similar share (23%) of undecideds. Focusing on them could boost overall rates of inoculation.

While independents are less opposed to vaccination than Republicans are, their opposition is also less driven by nefarious conspiracy theories. Among Republicans, 32% believe the American government is using the vaccine to microchip the population; a smaller 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats believe the same lie. (That percentage is a bit of a stunner; it is made all the more shocking by the fact the margin of error is just three points.) This, presumably, means that independents who are not in thrall to this theory would be receptive to a public information campaign about the safety of jabs. 

This week we also used a statistical model to assess the biggest causes of hesitancy—defined, simply, as whether someone was unvaccinated. We can perform the same calculations to predict whether someone says they are “not sure” about getting their jab. Using the demographic profiles of some 24,000 Americans, we have discerned that black Americans are particularly likely to be reluctant about—rather than opposed to—the covid-19 vaccine. After that, people who pay attention to the news only “now and then”, who never married or who live in exurban towns are also more likely to be unsure, controlling for other factors. We have differentiated already between the “jabs” and “jab-nots”, but focusing on persuading the “not sures” could produce higher returns on investment for policymakers.