Four in 10 Virginians told canvassers they are not likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine if one becomes available — even if it was free and federally approved, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University poll released Thursday.
On the flipside, 58% said they were somewhat or very likely to do so.
Pollsters with the Center for Public Policy at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs conducted the survey via telephone between Aug. 28 and Sept. 7, according to a news release. They used landlines and cellphones to interview 804 adults. The survey has an estimated margin of error of 5.17 percentage points.
Women were more skeptical of getting a coronavirus vaccine than men, the poll found. About 70% of men said they were likely to get vaccinated, while women were split just about down the middle.
Political party played an outsized role in respondents’ answers.
Democrats and independents were more likely to say they’d get a vaccine — 59% and 63%, respectively — while Republicans were split in half. More than a third of Republicans said they were “not at all likely” to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Out of the five regions surveyed, Tidewater saw the highest percentage of respondents — 46% — who said they’d be very likely to get a coronavirus vaccine.
Two-thirds of Virginians interviewed said they would not support making a vaccine mandatory, and that proportion held true in Tidewater as well.
The pollsters also asked people how safe they thought it was to send children back to school for in-person classes this fall. Over half said they believed it was “not too safe” or “not at all safe” to do so.
Tidewater and South Central were the regions most skeptical about physically sending children back to school, according to the poll.
Race and political party also influenced answers. More than half of people whom the poll identifies as minorities, and 77% of Democrats, said in-person school wasn’t safe. Sixty percent of Republicans said it was.
