Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Partisanship continues to hinder vaccination rates

People in line for the Covid vaccine
Malte Mueller/Getty Images

Even though more Americans are getting vaccinated against Covid-19, inoculation rates remain significantly depressed in some conservative and rural parts of the country.

More Republicans are opting to get vaccinated, but many remain hesitant due to the polarizing rhetoric that has persisted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, according to research released Monday by Citizen Data. Vaccine hesitancy is particularly high in rural, conservative areas, the nonpartisan research organization found.


Citizen Data's analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Census Bureau data found that vaccine hesitancy is most severe in parts of Georgia, Virginia and West Virginia. And by folding in its own ideology modeling, the research group determined a hesitancy score (0 for least hesitant to 100 for most hesitant) by media market.

At the top of the list is Dothan, Ala., a city of 261,000 that borders Georgia, with a vaccine hesitancy score of 100. Citizen Data determined 3 in 10 adults there are considered "rural conservative" and just 6 percent of its overall adult population is vaccinated.

The rest of the "most hesitant" list includes: Harrisonburg, Va.; Roanoke and Lynchburg, Va.; Albany, Ga.; Clarksburg and Weston, W.Va.; North Platte, Neb.; Macon, Ga.; Charlottesville, Va.; Amarillo, Texas; and Springfield, Mo.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Vaccine hesitancy ratesSource: Citizen Data

Although these areas and others continue to see vaccine aversion from conservatives, polling conducted in April by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows more Republicans are becoming amenable to it.

As of last month, 55 percent of Republicans surveyed said they had already received at least one dose or planned on getting vaccinated as soon as possible — an increase of 9 percentage points from March. Meanwhile the percentage of Republicans who said they would "definitely not" get vaccinated decreased from 29 percent in March to 20 percent in April.

Democrats remained the most enthusiastic about the vaccine, with 80 percent saying in April they had already received at least one dose or planned on getting it soon. This is only a slight increase from 79 percent in March.

Independents also saw a small increase in vaccination enthusiasm, from 57 percent in March to 59 percent in April.

Read More

Artists recording "We Are the World"

"We Are the World" united American on a common cause. Let's try to do that again.

Write your song for America

We have only four weeks until Election Day, but there’s still time for you to write your song for America.

This election is so close and we are so divided as a nation that half of us are going to be unhappy with the result of the presidential election. The Fulcrum wants to counter the rancor and divide, so we are offering our readers the chance to write a song — one that celebrates our common bonds. A song that calls out to every American to express their patriotism, no matter who wins, through positive action.

Keep ReadingShow less
Adam Kinzinger speaking at the Democratic National Convention

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger is among the many Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris.

Endorsements of presidential candidates speak volumes

Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.

There’s only a few weeks remaining before the 2024 presidential election comes to a close — that is, pending election certification, recounts, challenges and lawsuits. Ed Kilgore, political columnist for New York magazine since 2015, estimates that only 4 percent to 7 percent of the electorate is genuinely undecided.

However, there might be a bigger problem for both the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz campaigns. That is, Pew Research Center’s analysis of the past three elections reveals 63 percent of Americans — an alarming number — are not dependable voters. Sometimes they vote and sometimes they don’t. These voters are referred to as irregular voters.

Keep ReadingShow less
Robert Talisse

'There's nothing inevitable or permanent about democracy': A conversation with Robert Talisse

Berman is a distinguished fellow of practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, co-editor of Vital City, and co-author of "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age." This is the 12th in a series of interviews titled "The Polarization Project."

Robert Talisse, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, believes polarization is a problem that cannot be solved, only managed. He also believes the greatest threat to American democracy comes from within.

In Talisse’s diagnosis, American democracy suffers from a kind of autoimmune disorder. He makes the case that democracy can break down even when every participant in the process is operating in good faith to pursue their version of the common good. The reason this is so, Talisse argues over the course of a trilogy of books — “Overdoing Democracy,” “Sustaining Democracy” and “Civic Solitude” — is an occurrence that he calls “belief polarization.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Elderly woman on a train

A woman evacuating from Pokrovsk, Ukraine, in August looks out from a train car to say goodbye.

Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC "UA:PBC"/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

On Ageism Awareness Day, consider the impact of war on older people.

Kilaberia is an assistant professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.

We know the toll that war has on youth, but older adults are suffering displacement, too.

We have talked about age-friendly cities, age-friendly health care systems, age-friendly universities, age-friendly workplaces dementia-friendly communities. We are not talking about age-friendly or dementia-friendly humanitarian responses.

Tomorrow is Ageism Awareness Day and it offers us the opportunity to draw attention to the impact of ageism, particularly in the many war zones around the world.

Keep ReadingShow less