Poll Of NJ Voters Finds Big Partisan Split On COVID Vaccines

NEWARK, NJ — As New Jersey continues its distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, a new poll found a big difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to getting a shot.

Change Research and Newark-based nonprofit Project Ready recently released the results of a poll taken among 960 New Jersey voters from Feb. 12 to 15. (Learn more about the methodology here.)

According to researchers, respondents were largely split along political party lines. About 46 percent of Republican voters said they would get a vaccine, compared with 91 percent of Democrats.

The poll also found an overall increase in the number of New Jersey voters who say they’re willing to receive the vaccine, with the largest gain among Hispanic voters.

“At the same time, there are stark racial disparities among who has received the vaccine to date,” pollsters said.

Some highlights from the poll include:

• The overall number of voters willing to be vaccinated increased from 60 percent in November 2020 to 71 percent in February 2021.
• About 6 of 10 voters (59 percent) rated the state’s vaccine rollout “negatively.” The greatest divides in these results fall along partisan lines: 58 percent of Democrats said the state has done an “excellent” or “good” job in rolling out the vaccine, compared with just 6 percent of Republicans and 23 percent of independents.
• Although white voters (71 percent) were more likely to say they would receive the vaccine than Black voters (62 percent), they were three times as likely to say they have already received the vaccine (18 percent to 6 percent).
• The largest gains in willingness to receive the vaccine came among Hispanic voters (55 percent to 77 percent) and independent voters (47 percent to 64 percent), while there was almost no shift among Black voters (61 percent to 62 percent).

When those who don’t plan to take the vaccine were asked to explain their decision, the biggest reasons were: “want to wait to confirm it is safe” (24 percent) and “don’t trust vaccines generally” (18 percent).

Black voters were more than twice as likely (31 percent) to say they don’t trust vaccines compared with white voters (15 percent), pollsters said.

“While it’s encouraging to see acceptance of the vaccine increase, we clearly have more work to do to ensure that the distribution is equitable,” said Project Ready Executive Director Shennell McCloud.

“We encourage state leaders to double down on efforts to engage communities of color when it comes to the vaccine,” McCloud added.

Researchers shared the following notes about their methodology:

“Polling was conducted online from February 12 to 15, 2021. Using its Dynamic Online Sampling technology to attain a sample reflective of registered voters, Change Research polled 960 people in the state of New Jersey. Post-stratification weights were made on age, gender, political region, education, 2020 vote, and race and ethnicity to reflect the distribution of voters. All polls are subject to errors caused by interviewing a sample of persons, rather than the entire population. In 95 cases out of 100, the responses to this survey should be within plus or minus 3.6 percentage points of those that would have been obtained from interviewing the entire population of voters.”

OTHER NJ VACCINE POLLS

In November 2020, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll reported that about 40 percent of New Jersey residents said they would turn down a coronavirus vaccine. Read More: 2 In 5 NJ Residents Say They Won't Take Coronavirus Vaccine (POLL)

Between 36 percent and 47 percent of respondents said they "probably" or "definitely" won't get vaccinated against COVID-19. When asked to explain why not, here's what they said their "major reasons" were:

• 80 percent cited a concern about side effects.
• 82 percent cited the need for more information about how the vaccine works.
• 25 percent said they don't feel that they need it.
• 15 percent cited the potential cost of the vaccine.

In December 2020, Patch asked readers in New Jersey to let us know about their own confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. More than 4,500 people responded to our informal poll.

An overwhelming number of New Jersey Patch readers who responded to the survey — 72.8 percent — said they believe in vaccination and try to keep their own vaccines up to date. Meanwhile, 13.7 percent say they believe in it but don't always keep up to date.

Only 2.4 percent of respondents said they don't believe in vaccination at all, while 7.3 percent indicated they mistrust vaccinations and tend to avoid them.

Read More: Most In NJ Will Take COVID-19 Vaccine, But Some Skeptical (SURVEY)

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