1

I found this claim among a survey of anti-vaxxers reported on qz

60% of anti-vaxxers describe their political leaning as liberal:

Much of the other profile characterics reported there aren't surprising at all e.g. "88% more likely not to have seen a doctor in the past year", low income and education etc., but the one about political orientation struck me as unlikely. Are there other surveys like this and do they agree or disagree with one on the political orientation of anti-vaxxers?

I've looked at the actual Pew report linked in the story and I can't see the breakdown of anti-vaxxers by any of the characteristics in the qz story (maybe it's in the raw data, I haven't checked that.) The qz story says "CivicScience extrapolated a series of indicators to help understand their profile", and then gives the quoted claim, so that data doesn't seem to come from Pew.

So why would this matter distribution-wise? Less than 25% of Americans actually identified as liberal in 2015 (the year of the qz story). Only 42% of Democrats and respectively 7% of Republicans identified as liberal in same year, according to Gallup. So assuming these two surveys didn't diverge on how they asked about the political orientation (was the there a "moderate" answer possible in the qz CivicScience poll?) then we would know something about a correlation/concentration of anti-vaxxers. And it would be puzzling considering that, in contrast, liberal Democrats are the leading group in trusting scientists in other matters like climate change.

Fizz
  • 57,051
  • 18
  • 175
  • 291
  • Would you be satisfied with a reference to the original Pew report that they are referring to? Do you doubt the survey quality or the reporting of it? – Oddthinking Nov 24 '17 at 08:13
  • 1
    @Oddthinking: I've looked at the report linked from qz but I don't see "liberal" in it, at least not in the summary. It might be in the dataset. – Fizz Nov 24 '17 at 08:31
  • Why were my comments (citing some possibly relevant data, not so far as I can see found in the question this is a dupe of, or the answer found there, or its comments) removed? – Gareth McCaughan Nov 24 '17 at 12:33
  • @GarethMcCaughan: I guess to encourage you to post as an answer (in the other question now) – Fizz Nov 24 '17 at 12:34
  • @Fizz Maybe that's the purpose, but the information I've been able to find is relevant to this question but not specifically directed at the alleged vaccination/autism link and therefore not relevant to the other one. So if I posted there an answer that would have been appropriate here, most likely it will (rightly) be downvoted as not answering the question it's attached to. – Gareth McCaughan Nov 24 '17 at 12:35
  • @GarethMcCaughan: Hopefully a mod will edit that question to broaden it. – Fizz Nov 24 '17 at 12:37
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/69215/discussion-between-fizz-and-gareth-mccaughan). – Fizz Nov 24 '17 at 13:49
  • Liberal democrats uncritically believe (that's what "trusting scientists" means to me, so better wording may be desired) in science of climate change out of about 1000 other scientific topics. That doesn't seem like a sound basis to assume they are more or less likely to believe scientists on a random one other of 1000 topics. The whole question seems to perpetuate a highly offensive "liberals are pro science, conservative are anti science" stereotype; instead of just asking a straightforward claim in first paragraph.You may want to investigate political breakdown of anti-GMO and anti-Nuke too – user5341 Nov 26 '17 at 14:50
  • @user5341: fair enough! Do note that I've added that bit because matt_black asked why should we care that there are these differences... However I see his comment has been deleted (by a mod?) in the meantime... – Fizz Nov 26 '17 at 17:47
  • @user5341: So paraphrasing from memory he said something like stupidity is equally distributed across the political spectrum... which may be true overall, but I still find it interesting what kinds of irrational beliefs are more concentrated in one area vs another of the spectrum. – Fizz Nov 26 '17 at 17:58
  • @Fizz - comments tend to be deleted. On Skeptics even faster than other sites :) – user5341 Nov 26 '17 at 18:38
  • 1
    @Fizz - As the saying goes, Republicans are bad at science, Democrats are bad at math. – Ask About Monica Nov 27 '17 at 17:15

0 Answers0