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This is the final version. Available on open access from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record ; Background. Vaccine hesitancy threatens public health. Some evidence suggests vaccine hesitancy in Europe may be linked with the success of populist parties, but more systematic analysis is needed. Methods. We examine the prevalence of individual level vaccine hesitancy across the EU and its association with political orientations. We also analyse whether success of populist parties is linked with vaccine hesitancy and uptake. We draw on individual-level Eurobarometer data from 2019, with a total of 27,524 respondents across the EU. We also rely on national and regional level populist party vote shares. Finally, for a timeseries analysis, we rely on aggregated populist party support as measured in the European Social Survey waves 1-9 (2002 to 2018), and national immunization coverage rates from the WHO from 2004-2018. Results. While vaccine hesitancy is confined to a minority of the population, this group is large enough to risk herd immunity. Political orientations on a left-right dimension are not strongly linked to vaccine hesitancy. Instead, vaccine hesitancy is associated with anti-elite world views and culturally closed rather than cosmopolitan positions. Conclusion. Vaccine hesitancy is not only present in all EU member states, but also maps on broader dimensions of cultural conflict. Hesitancy is rooted in a broader worldview, rather than misperceptions about health risks. Pro-vaccine interventions need to consider the underling worldview, rather than simply targeting misperceptions. ; British Academy ; European Union Horizon 2020

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record ; While previous studies have validated vaccine hesitancy scales with uptake behavior at the individual level, the conditions under which aggregated survey data are useful are less clear. We show that vaccine public opinion data aggregated at the subnational level can serve as a valid indicator of aggregate vaccine behaviour. We use a public opinion survey (Eurobarometer EB 91.2) with data on vaccine hesitancy for the EU in 2019. We link this information to (subnational) regional immunization coverage rates for childhood vaccines – DTP3, MCV1, and MCV2 -- obtained from the WHO for 2019. We conduct multilevel regression analyses with data for 177 regions in 20 countries. Given the variation in vaccine hesitancy and immunization rates between countries and within countries, we affirm the valuable role that surveys can play as a public health surveillance tool when it comes to vaccine behavior. We find statistically significantly lower regional vaccine immunization rates in regions where vaccine hesitancy is more pronounced. Our results suggest that different uptake rates across subnational regions are due, at least in part, to differences in attitudes towards vaccines and vaccination. The results are robust to several alternative specifications. ; British Academy ; European Commission

This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this record ; Does emphasizing the pandemic as a partisan issue polarize factual beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions concerning the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic? To answer this question, we conducted a preregistered survey experiment with a "questions as treatment" design in late March 2020 with 1,587 U.S. respondents recruited via Prime Panel. Respondents were randomly assigned to answer several questions about then-president Donald J. Trump and the coronavirus (including receiving an information cue by evaluating one of Trump's tweets) either at the beginning of the survey (treated condition) or at the end of the survey (control condition). Receiving these questions at the beginning of the survey had no direct effect on COVID-19 factual beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. ; European Union Horizon 2020

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record ; Data availability: The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: doi:10.7910/DVN/HUJZMO ; Psychological attachment to political parties can bias people's attitudes, beliefs, and group evaluations. Studies from psychology suggest that self-affirmation theory may ameliorate this problem in the domain of politics on a variety of outcome measures. We report a series of studies conducted by separate research teams that examine whether a self-affirmation intervention affects a variety of outcomes, including political or policy attitudes, factual beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, affective polarization, and evaluations of news sources. The different research teams use a variety of self-affirmation interventions, research designs, and outcomes. Despite these differences, the research teams consistently find that self-affirmation treatments have little effect. These findings suggest considerable caution is warranted for researchers who wish to apply the self-affirmation framework to studies that investigate political attitudes and beliefs. By presenting the "null results" of separate research teams, we hope to spark a discussion about whether and how the self-affirmation paradigm should be applied to political topics. ; European Union Horizon 2020 ; NASA ; Energy Foundation ; University of Minnesota ; National Science Foundation (NSF)