Americans favor vaccine mandates, but support is driven by the vaccinated

That’s because, while there is a partisan divide over mandatory vaccines, a healthy share of Republicans actually do support them too. Morning Consult found that 38 percent of Republicans supported company-mandated vaccines, albeit with 49 percent opposed. And the COVID States Project found that 45 percent of Republicans supported even government-mandated vaccines for all. Of course, these numbers paled in comparison to support among Democrats: 76 percent in the Morning Consult poll (with 15 percent opposed), 84 percent in the COVID States Project poll.

But these partisan divides are just proxies for the real schism over mandatory shots: individual vaccination status. For example, Morning Consult found that 74 percent of already-vaccinated people supported company-mandated vaccines, while 54 percent of unvaccinated people opposed them. Interestingly, 28 percent of unvaccinated people actually supported mandatory vaccines — if you are one of these people, we’d love to hear from you!