Polls show non-voters, not Trump voters, make up the largest share of vaccine-reluctant Americans

Luckily, they are also particularly responsive to monetary incentives to get shots

If you’re coming into the data cold, you might think that Trump voters make up the majority of Americans who say they will not get vaccinated for covid-19. That is a reasonable assumption; We know that that conspiratorial thinking about covid-19 is more prevalent on the right, and Republicans were much more likely to stage protests against covid-19 lockdowns last year than Democrats were. And while in office, Donald Trump encouraged both the covid skeptics and protestors. The logical extension of these data is that his voters would be the least likely to believe in vaccinations, too.

But you would be wrong if you thought this. Not, like, in a “ha-ha, dummy” way that implies Democrats don’t like vaccines either; From modeling individual responses to polling data I have found membership in the Republican Party to be the most significant predictor of vaccine hesitancy, more powerful than any other demographic or political trait. No, the point is instead that there is a third group of peop…