New survey finds that support for vaccine mandates remains high

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, President Biden has taken a harder stance against those unwilling to vaccinate by issuing vaccine mandates.

Professor James Druckman, of the Department of Political Science, found that most Americans continue to support his mandates — and 65% support a universal mandate.

Druckman is a member of a university consortium called The COVID States Project, which includes researchers from Northwestern, Northeastern, Harvard, and Rutgers. The researchers surveyed more than 20,000 Americans to measure their opinions on vaccine mandates.

The researchers found that a majority of Americans would support narrower vaccine mandates for students attending school or college and for travelers flying commercially. Six out of 10 Americans also support requiring large companies to either vaccinate or regularly tested their employees for COVID-19.

However, despite Biden’s initiative with mandates, another survey conducted at the same time shows that approval of his handling of the pandemic dropped from 57% in June to 49% by September. Still, President Biden’s coronavirus approval rating remains higher than former President Trump’s approval rating of 34% at the same time last year.

“It does not seem that the mandate per se though is at play in the approval effects; our data suggest that it was more about frustration with the general pandemic and the steps backwards caused by the Delta variant,” Druckman said.

The pandemic’s trajectory also affected what Americans thought of their governors, with those leading states with higher COVID-19 case rates having lower approval ratings (42%) than those leading states with lower case rates. Overall, Democratic governors have seen a large partisan gap in approval because of a large decrease in Republican approval—from 58% in April 2020 to 29% by September 2021. Approval of Republican governors also fell for the same reason, dropping from 77% to 55% over the same period.

Lear more in the Institute for Policy Research’s article, “Most Americans Continue to Support Vaccine Mandates—and Want More.”