DMN, UT-Tyler poll: 1 in 4 Texans say they likely won’t get COVID vaccine

As Texas reached the grim milestone of 60,000 COVID-19 deaths last week — 549 days after the state recorded its first — a poll of 1,148 Texans conducted by The Dallas Morning News and The University of Texas at Tyler demonstrates the anti-vaccine hurdles that the state still has to battle.

Of the 1,093 people who answered a question about whether they plan to take the COVID-19 vaccine, about 1 in 4 said they either won’t, or are unlikely to.

Eighteen percent said they won’t get vaccinated. Another 6% responded that it was unlikely they would get the vaccine, while 9% said they “probably would.”

Seven percent said they would “definitely” get the vaccine, according to the poll, which was conducted from Sept. 7 to Sept. 14. More than half of the respondents —59%— said they were already vaccinated. That figure aligns with the vaccine reality in Texas: as of Friday, 59.8% of eligible Texans were fully vaccinated, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Of those who said they do not plan to make an appointment, the largest proportion — 27% — said they were concerned about potential side effects from the vaccine.

Medical experts have repeatedly said that vaccine side effects, ranging from sore arms at the injection site, to fatigue and fever, pale in comparison to symptoms unvaccinated people who get sick with COVID-19 may experience.

Another 15% said they do not have enough information about the vaccine. Only 4% said they were too busy to set up an appointment.

The poll also found that Black voters surveyed were most likely to say that they would not take the vaccine. Twenty-three percent of Blacks questioned said they would not take it, with another 10% saying it was unlikely they would. Side effects concerned 36% of the Blacks surveyed-- and another 29% answered they didn’t want it. In comparison, 24% of whites and 16% percent of Latinos surveyed said they didn’t want it.

Steven Priddy, who answered questions for the poll, said his reason for getting the vaccine as soon as it was available to him was simple.

“People are dying,” said Priddy, 44, of Tarrant County. “It’s really no question for me.”

Priddy said for that same reason, he supports vaccine mandates like the one President Joe Biden issued earlier this month — and which Gov. Greg Abbott has repeatedly said he will never issue.

Biden’s sweeping mandate, which requires companies that contract with the federal government and private-sector employers with more than 100 workers to require vaccines, could affect as many as 100 million Americans.

“We’re in a pandemic, and at this point, we need to force people to get it done,” Priddy said.

Support of Abbott’s ban on vaccine mandates is evenly split, according to the poll: 49% said they supported the ban, while 49% said they were opposed. The other 2% said they did not know whether they supported or opposed the ban.

Stacey Burns, another Texan who answered questions for the poll, said she won’t get the vaccine because she believes she’s naturally immune from COVID-19 after contracting the virus early in the pandemic. The CDC recommends even those who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 still get vaccinated.

“There is not enough information about the vaccines to warrant getting one,” said Burns, 49, of Orange County. “Rather than pushing the vaccine, we should be pushing people to eating right, taking vitamins and other healthy measures.”

Methodology

The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,148 registered voters conducted between Sept. 7-14. The mixed-mode sample includes 292 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas-Tyler with support from ReconMR and 857 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of online respondents. The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is +/- 3.7 percentage points for a 95% confidence interval. The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Using information from the 2020 Current Population Survey and the Texas Secretary of State, the sample’s gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, metropolitan density and vote choice were matched to the population of registered voters in Texas.