The Government Business Council recently sent out a survey to thousands of federal employees seeking their comments and opinions on a variety of topics. One of these was Joe Biden’s mandate to have all government workers vaccinated or face dismissal from their jobs. Despite the repeated claims of the Biden administration and most cable news hosts, saying that mandatory vaccinations are “a popular idea,” that’s certainly not what this survey seems to indicate. A majority of respondents said they are opposed to the mandate and that number includes people who are themselves vaccinated. Is it possible that Biden is once again misreading his audience? (Government Executive)

The majority of federal employees recently surveyed (53%) strongly or somewhat disagreed with the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees, while 44% strongly or somewhat agreed with it.

The Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive, sent a survey between October 27 and November 2 to Government Executive and Defense One readers, which drew 3,186 respondents. The survey had a 95% confidence level and margin of error of +/- 3%; the vast majority of respondents currently work for a federal agency but the results did include some retirees and congressional and private-sector workers. President Biden announced the mandate on September 9 and the deadline is November 22.

“I am not pro or anti-vaccine, I am pro-choice,” wrote one federal employee in the comments section. “It should be a choice not a mandate, last I knew this was a free country.”

The wording of the survey question regarding the mandate is a bit tricky to parse because it was written in a way that almost seems to push the respondents to say something good about the mandatory vaccinations. The workers were asked “how effective” they thought the mandate would be. The choices offered were:

• Extremely effective
• Very effective
• Moderately effective
• Slightly effective
• Will not be effective

This is grossly different from how typical political polling questions are structured. For example, when sampling voters’ level of approval for an official, they are generally offered choices of strongly or moderately approving along with strongly or moderately disapproving. This survey offered four choices all expressing the opinion that the mandate will be effective at one level or another and only one choice rejecting the idea entirely.

But taking the wording of these options as it would typically be used in a political poll, you can easily see that people who are in favor of the mandate would generally select either the “extremely” or “very” choices. Those who are dubious about the prospect would pick one of the other three. Alternately, you could surmise that those who chose “moderately” were on the fence, while the two highest ratings supported the mandate and the two lowest were opposed. Either way you prefer to read it, the survey shows a distinct lack of overwhelming enthusiasm. Only 42% chose the “extremely” or “very” options. The rest chose one of the others, with 29% (just shy of one-third) opting for the mandate not being effective at all.

The written comments submitted by some of the respondents speak further to the variety of people who aren’t just anti-vaxxers and probably believe in the vaccines but still don’t think it should be mandatory. One worker wrote, “the vaccine mandate is most likely legal. It’s also probably effective. It, however, does not mean the federal [government] should have the power to force adults and the civilian workforce to get a shot that they don’t want.”

If these are the sentiments that are boiling under the surface in Washington today, this could spell even more trouble for Joe Biden. Washingtonians tend to be a fairly left-leaning bunch to begin with and they’re probably not all that inclined to “take on Big Brother” when it’s Big Brother that signs their paychecks. And we know from previous reports that vaccination rates among federal workers are already above the national average. So if even a majority of these people are still opposed to the idea of a federal mandate, Biden may be turning off a significant portion of his own base.

We’ll probably learn a lot more about this when the midterms roll around next year. You can rest assured that vaccine and mask mandates will be hot topics on the campaign trail and the results of those races will likely speak volumes about these policies.