Back in August of 2020, YouGov asked survey respondents “Do you think parents should be required to have their children vaccinated against infectious diseases?” to which 79% of those who identified as Democrats said yes and 10% said no, while 59% of Republicans said yes and 27% said no. The same question was asked in a survey this month and now YouGov finds 85% of Dems in favor/8% against and 46% of Republicans in favor/35% against, a 21 net drop in a year.

When asked specifically “Do you think students age 12 and up should be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19?”, 79% of Dems say yes/9% no, compared to 25% yes/63% no for Republicans.

Now, converting the Republican responses each question to a binary by kicking out the useless-for-this-exercise “I don’t know” assholes for the August 2020 Republican yes/no binary on all vaccines works out to 68.6% yes/31.3% no, then 56.8% yes/43.2% no in October 2021 (23.7 net drop), and 28.4% yes/71.5% no specifically on Coronavirus vaxes for kids in the same survey.

The crosstabs show the question on all vaccines (#27) was asked two questions after the one solely regarding COVID-19 vaccines (#25) and, while it was not worded specifically to exclude COVID-19 vaccines (which are not currently required on anywhere near the same scale as MMR, if they’re required at all at this point for students 12 and older anywhere), it shows that even when given the chance to at least partially correct themselves, anywhere between 19% and 28% of Republican respondents not affirmatively a yes on COVID-19 vaxes said no to all other vaxes.

Meaning that, in plainer terms, the surveys show that roughly about a quarter of all Republican voters have bought so much into the Coronavirus vaccine bullshit that they joined the ranks of the once smaller pre-2020 anti-every-kind-of-vax set. How’s that for effective right wing messaging?