Gadarian quoted in Vox piece on political polarization, COVID-19 vaccine

July 8, 2021

Vox

Shana Kushner Gadarian

Political Science Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

COVID-19

Health Policy

Political Parties

United States

Vox

Shana Kushner Gadarian

The COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S., at face value, has become a division between those who are vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated. But, increasingly, it’s also a division between Democrats and Republicans—as vaccination has ended up on one of the biggest dividing lines in the U.S., political polarization. "Partisanship is now the strongest and most consistent divider in health behaviors," says Shana Gadarian, professor of political science. "It didn’t have to be this way," Gadarian says. "There’s really nothing about the nature of being a right-wing party that would require undercutting the threat of COVID from the very beginning." Gadarian was quoted in the Vox article, "How political polarization broke America’s vaccine campaign."