A new poll conducted by Public First finds that more Americans doubt vaccine safety than trust it. That headline has predictably been framed as a story about rising anti-vaccine sentiment on the right, but buried in the data is a finding that should trouble public health leadership: 36 percent of those who voted for Kamala Harris agree that the facts on vaccines are still up for debate, and that it is damaging to enforce their uptake. That’s not a fringe position. And for diseases that require near-universal community participation to be kept in check, it’s a math problem that no mandate can solve.
The poll found that only 52 percent of Harris voters — the most institutionally aligned, most pro-mandate political cohort in the country — agreed that the science on vaccines is clear and that it is damaging to question it. More than a third hold a view that conventionally would be described as vaccine-skeptical. That’s not a fringe element. That’s a constituency. It isn’t ignorance that needs correction. It’s a signal that deserves to be understood.
The poll framed its questions in terms of which candidates respondents had supported, but this is an issue that transcends politics. We need a vaccine policy that the public can trust. This starts with talking not about vaccines broadly but about individual vaccines and the purposes they serve. For measles and pertussis — diseases that can devastate immunocompromised children and infants too young to be vaccinated — herd immunity requires roughly 95 percent population uptake for protection. We aren’t close to that in many parts of the country, and tight mandates haven’t closed the gap. When California eliminated personal belief exemptions, vaccine uptake among kindergarteners rose, but the number of children in the “no immunization data” category — primarily those outside the public school system — doubled. Coercion doesn’t convert skeptics, it just removes them from view.
So what are the 36 percent of Harris voters actually telling us? The poll question asks whether the facts on vaccines are still up for debate. That is not the same as asking whether vaccines work. A parent can believe measles vaccination is essential and still recognize that the science on the complete American schedule — 27 shots by age two and an aluminum burden up to twice that of peer nations — has never been comprehensively studied as a whole. Saying the facts are not fully settled on that question is not anti-science. It is simply accurate.
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When Elena Conis, a vaccine historian at the University of California-Berkeley, was interviewed on the poll’s results, she commented that, “It’s always been hard to vaccinate adults, and vaccinating children … (has been) the most expedient way to get a healthy adult population.” That’s a view held by many public health leaders, and one that has informed vaccine policy for decades, but is rarely admitted. Imagine if we followed this script with parents: “We want to give your child this shot. No, your kid isn’t at risk of this disease, but there are homeless men and intravenous drug users we just can’t reach and it would be much more convenient if we could use your kid to tackle this problem.” There might be some parents who would agree, but many would balk, and that would be a rational response. Conis wasn’t mistaken in her comments. She just said the quiet part out loud. When parents learn they’ve been deceived - even with good intentions - you get poll results that look like this one.
The updated CDC schedule kept every vaccine that reduces community transmission intact — measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and the others that genuinely require population-level participation to protect the vulnerable. All of them are still there. What it added was transparency, allowing shared decision-making for vaccines that protect individuals rather than communities. It is the only framework that gives a credible path to the coverage we actually need.
It is not possible to mandate our way to 95 percent for the diseases that matter. But any successful strategy starts with finally being honest with parents about what each vaccine does, who it protects, and why their child’s participation matters. We are not going to get there by pretending that the people with questions are a fringe group we can just ignore. These poll results show us that there are many parents — on both sides of the aisle — who could be open to persuasion. Building trust starts with respecting parents enough to tell them the truth.
Dr. Monique Yohanan, MD, MPH, is a senior fellow for health policy at Independent Women.
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