Will Party Identification Impact the Willingness of Americans to get the COVID Vaccine?
Elevator Pitch:
In an America which has been rocked by the impacts of state shut-downs and quarantine, for many, the coronavirus vaccine is a ray of hope. However, there have also been an array of claims against the efficacy of the vaccine and a general sense of vaccine hesitancy among many Americans. While the world slowly gets back to normal through various vaccination efforts, will Americans feel inclined to do their part and end the pandemic?
Key Findings:
Based on polling data from December 2020, my research finds that there is not a statistically significant relationship between party identification and willingness to get a coronavirus vaccine. However, there is a statistically significant relationship between your level of trust in President Joe Biden and your willingness to get a vaccine.
Author’s main message:
Since March of 2020, 33.3 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and 584,000 Americans have died from COVID. In contrast, the U.S. has administered 292.1 million coronavirus vaccine doses. Now, 132 million Americans, or 40.7%, of the population is fully vaccinated. It would seem that the vaccination effort has reached a great number of people and has convinced them that the efficacy and safety of a vaccination far outweighs the risk of contracting COVID. However, in the terribly divided state of American politics today, we should consider the influence of the politicization of the vaccine on the willingness of some to get vaccinated. After making considerations for the influence of politics on the vaccine effort, though, the data analysis that I have done shows there is little political influence.
Data & Discussion:
Both the current democratic president, Joe Biden, and former republican president, Donald Trump, have publicly stated that Americans should get the vaccine if they have the chance. President Biden makes this statement nearly everyday. President Trump said about the vaccine in a Fox News interview on March 17th, 2021, “I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.” As leaders of their respective political parties, theoretically their constituents will listen to their advice about the coronavirus vaccine. This is why I am wondering, will the coronavirus vaccination get support from Americans - regardless of their party identification?
Interestingly, there is not a statistically significant relationship between party identification and willingness to get a coronavirus vaccination. Public opinion on the COVID-19 response and the pandemic itself continues to be polarized, so this finding may seem odd. There is, however, a statistically significant relationship between your level of trust in President Biden and whether or not you will get the coronavirus vaccine. While looking at just a graph of my data alone, one might surmise that party identification is an indicator in vaccine willingness. However, both a bivariate and multivariate regression model of my dataset proves that there are interesting and unexpected relationships between the data.
The data suggests that while trust in Joe Biden for information about the vaccine is high enough to form a statistically significant relationship, trust in Donald Trump for information about the vaccine is low. So, Trump’s public statement urging viewers, and his voters, on Fox News to get a vaccine will likely have had no effect based on my data analysis.
To get to this conclusion, I used the AP NORC polling data for public use from December of 2020. However, there have been a multitude of similar studies conducted across the country throughout this pandemic year. Vaccine hesitancy has declined some as the vaccination effort has ramped up in recent months, but it appears that 1 in 4 Americans still do not want to get a vaccine if it was available to them. An April of 2021 poll by NPR shows that vaccine hesitancy is present among all demographics, age ranges, and political parties.
We can consider an individual’s political party identification as separated from their vaccine choice, as regressions of the data suggest. However, due to the statistically significant relationship between vaccine willingness and your trust in Joe Biden for information about the coronavirus, it is clear there is still some outside influence on the choice to get a vaccine. Political messaging coming from the Biden White House appears to have a positive effect on the vaccination rates in America today.
In order to reach nationwide herd immunity and a return to normal, or an entrance into a post-pandemic America, roughly 80% of the American population will need to get vaccinated against the disease. The new question is: how many must be convinced of the efficacy of the vaccine, regardless of their trust in Joe Biden?
WORKS CITED:
Brumfiel, Geoff. “Vaccine Refusal May Put Herd Immunity At Risk, Researchers Warn.” NPR, NPR, 7 Apr. 2021,
www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/07/984697573/vaccine-refusal-may-put-herd-immu nity-at-risk-researchers-warn.
“Many Remain Doubtful about Getting COVID-19 Vaccine - AP-NORC.” AP, 11 Jan. 2021, apnorc.org/projects/many-remain-doubtful-about-getting-covid-19-vaccine/.
Neergaard, Lauran, and Hannah Fingerhut. “AP-NORC Poll: Only Half in US Want Shots as Vaccine Nears.” NORC at the University of Chicago, 9 Dec. 2020, www.apnorc.org/.
Neergaard, Lauran. “AP-NORC Poll: Only Half in US Want Shots as Vaccine Nears.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 9 Dec. 2020,
apnews.com/article/ap-norc-poll-us-half-want-vaccine-shots-4d98dbfc0a64d60d52ac84c3065da c55.
Ritchie et al. , Research and data: Hannah. “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations - Statistics and Research.” Our World in Data,
ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL.
“Trump Tells Republican Supporters to Get Vaccinated.” BBC News, BBC, 17 Mar. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56424614.