HALF of Trump supporters say they will never get vaccinated for coronavirus

A growing number of Donald Trump‘s supporters say they will never get vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to a new survey.  

Fifty percent of unvaccinated Americans who voted for Trump last fall said they would ‘never’ get a vaccine in the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, while 17 percent said they were undecided and 24 percent said they would get one as soon as it’s made available to them. 

By comparison, just eight percent of respondents who voted for Joe Biden said they would never get vaccinated, 15 percent were undecided and 68 percent said they would do so as soon as possible. 

The number of Trump supporters who said they would never get a vaccine rose six points from the previous poll conducted in mid-February – making them the only demographic in the survey to see a downward trend in willingness to get vaccinated. 

It comes as the Biden administration is ramping up efforts to convince skeptical groups – including Republicans – of the importance of widespread vaccinations in bringing the pandemic to its knees.   

Republicans have consistently shown lower interest in getting vaccinated across all 12 polls conducted by Yahoo News and YouGov since last July – a trend that the Biden administration has acknowledged as problematic. 

‘We recognize as a Democratic administration with a Democratic president that we may not be the most effective messenger to communicate with hard-core supporters of the former president,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing on Friday.  

Asked if Biden wants to see Trump get involved in the campaign to raise vaccine acceptance, Psaki said: ‘Well, if former President Trump woke up tomorrow and wanted to be more vocal about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, certainly we’d support that.

‘Every other living former president … has participated in public campaigns. They did not need an engraved invitation to do so.’

Trump has urged people to get vaccinated, doing so again two weeks ago at a conservative political gathering in Florida.

But he hasn’t been among former presidents and other public officials who have been vaccinated on camera to encourage others to get the shot. 

It was revealed only recently that he was vaccinated in private at the White House before leaving office in January. 

Trump did not appear in a new public service campaign for the COVID-19 vaccine that included former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. 

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, on Sunday said he wishes Trump would do more to persuade his followers to get vaccinated.  

Speaking to Fox News, Fauci lamented polls that have shown Trump supporters are more likely to refuse to get vaccinated, saying politics needs to be separated from ‘commonsense, no-brainer’ public health measures.

He said it would be a ‘game changer’ for the country’s vaccine efforts if the former president used his ‘incredible influence’ among Republicans.

‘If he came out and said: “Go and get vaccinated. It’s really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country,” it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him,’ Fauci said.  

He added that he doesn’t understand Republicans’ resistance to the vaccine. 

‘What is the problem here? This is a vaccine that is going to be lifesaving for millions of people,’ he said on Meet the Press.

‘I mean, I just can’t comprehend what the reason for that is when you have a vaccine that’s 94-95 percent effective and it is very safe. I just don’t get it.’ 

As of Tuesday, more than 109 million vaccine doses have been administered around the US at a current pace of about 2.5 million per day, according to CDC data. 

About 21.4 percent of the population has received one dose of the vaccine, and 11.5 percent is fully vaccinated.  

The latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted with more than 1,600 participants between March 4 and 8, showed a negligible difference the number of Republicans (26%) and Democrats (28%) who have already received the vaccine. 

However, the question about when unvaccinated respondents planned to get one showed that 35 percent of Republicans will not, three times higher than the 12 percent of Democrats who said the same.  

Trump’s ability to change his supporters’ minds was called into question in a separate survey by veteran pollster Frank Luntz, which found that skeptical conservatives are far more likely to trust local health officials than national politicians – including the former president.  

The 19 participants in Luntz’s survey, first reported by the Washington Post, cited distrust of politicians and concerns about unknown long-term side effects of the vaccines as the key reasons for their hesitancy to get one.  

Biden appeared to refer to Luntz’ findings on Monday when asked about how his administration planned to reach reluctant Republicans. 

‘I discussed it with my team, and they say the thing that has more impact than anything Trump would say to MAGA folks is what the local doctor, what the local preacher, what the local people in the community say,’ the president said. 

‘I urge all local docs and ministers and priests to talk about why it is important to get that vaccine.’