Description/Abstract

Political divisions shaped public health responses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with conservatives expressing higher vaccine hesitancy than liberals. But does where conservatives live matter? This brief summarizes findings from a study using survey data from 683 U.S. adults (ages 18-94) collected March-April 2023, combined with 2020 presidential election results by zip code. The authors found that liberals consistently had low vaccine hesitancy and high uptake regardless of where they lived, but conservatives living in lower Trump vote share communities reported lower vaccine hesitancy and higher vaccination and booster uptake than conservatives in high Trump vote share communities. This pattern was especially pronounced for booster doses, with uptake ranging from 60% in low Trump vote share areas to less than 35% in high Trump vote share areas.

Document Type

Research Brief

Keywords

Vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19, political conservatism, regional political climate, vaccine uptake

Disciplines

COVID-19 | Psychology | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Public Health | Public Policy

Date

3-17-2026

Language

English

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Public Affairs and Policy Research Initiative Grant from Colgate University. The authors thank Alyssa Kirk and Shannon Monnat for their review and editorial assistance.

The authors used Claude (Anthropic) to assist with formatting the research brief from the original academic publication and drafting initial text. All content was reviewed, verified, and edited by the authors, who take full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of this work.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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