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Originally Posted by
dbroncsinmo
It's actually a reality. Liberals are by far the majority in the antivax group. Those liberals just like to single out the covid vaccine in an attempt to make conservatives the villain.
Aw. You tried.
From 2018:
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Our findings corroborate analyses that show that the intent to vaccinate differs among conservatives and liberals with conservatives expressing less intent to vaccinate. Similarly, those with lower levels of trust in government medical experts are also less likely to express intent to vaccinate, and these individuals also tend to be conservative.
From 2019:
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But in states where legislators have advanced serious efforts to tighten restrictions, such as Maine, Washington, Colorado and Oregon, nearly all of the opponents are Republicans who’ve taken a medical freedom stance.
“The more they dig into it being about freedom, the more susceptible they become to the theories,” said Dave Gorski, a Michigan physician who has tracked the anti-vaccine movement for two decades. “Appeals to freedom are like the gateway drug to pseudoscience.”
At the extremes are legislators like Jonathan Stickland, a pro-National Rifle Association, Christian conservative in the Texas Legislature, who has described vaccines as “sorcery” while personally attacking Baylor College of Medicine scientist Peter Hotez, who has a daughter with autism and works on vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. “Parental rights mean more to us than your self-enriching ‘science,’” Stickland tweeted at Hotez earlier this month.
That same day, the Oregon Republican Party’s official Twitter account posted that Oregon Democrats were “ramming forced injections down every Oregon parent’s throat.”
Other Republican state officials have blamed Central American immigrants for disease outbreaks, echoing a talking point of Fox commentator Lou Dobbs. In fact, experts say, children in many of those countries are more thoroughly vaccinated than their U.S. counterparts against diseases like whooping cough and measles.
In Washington state, the House sponsor of a bill to end exemptions from measles vaccination was state Rep. Paul Harris, a moderate Republican whose district was the epicenter of a measles outbreak. But in the state Senate, the entire 20-member GOP delegation — as well as two Democrats — opposed the bill, although they failed to defeat it.
From 2015:
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A survey released last week from the Pew Research Center showed that 68 percent of US adults believe that vaccinations of children should be required, while 30 percent say that parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their kids.
...
Thirty-four percent of Republicans and 33 percent of independents told pollsters that parents should be able to decide about vaccinations, versus just 22 percent of Democrats who said the same.
And, within the past five years or so, Republicans have become LESS likely to say vaccinations should be required, while Democrats are now MORE likely to advocate for the mandatory shots.
In 2009, 71 percent of both Democrats and Republicans said vaccinations should be required. By last August, that number decreased to 65 percent for Republicans, but it’s increased to 76 percent for Democrats
From 2019:
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In the survey data, there were some differences between respondents from different regions of the country but the greatest division observed was ideological, with self-described liberals being 16 percentage points more likely to support vaccine mandates than respondents who called themselves conservative.
Seventy percent of liberal voters said they favor an immunization requirement compared to 54 percent of conservatives. Sixty-one percent of self-described moderates approved of mandatory vaccinations.
Broken down by party affiliation, similar trends were apparent, 54 percent of Republicans favored vaccine requirements, along with 59 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats.
Not only are liberals not "by far" the majority in the antivax group, they're not at all the majority in the antivax group. Conservatives have eagerly taken that group over, and they've been doing so for years before COVID was a thing.
Those darn liberals and their singling out the COVID vaccine!
