COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is the New Terrain for Political Division among Americans

By: Sarah K. Cowan, Nicholas Mark* & Jennifer A. Reich

Published in: Socius 7 (2021)

Politically conservative Americans are less likely than those who identify as liberal to report a willingness to get a vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019. Using data from the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Survey from November 2020 to February 2021, the authors find that this partisan divide in vaccine hesitancy has increased over time. Recent scholarship has suggested that these differences can be attributed to personal characteristics, including varying levels of trust in institutions. The authors find that although the data supported this hypothesis in mid-November, by early February differences in demographics, concern about the pandemic, and institutional trust no longer explained the partisan gap. The authors explain the deepening divide by turning to recent evidence that political party affiliation has become a source of identity that shapes personal decision making.

Periodic Discordance Between Vote Equality and Representational Equality in the United States

By: Sarah K. Cowan

Published in: Sociological Science 2 (2015)

American democracy has two central values that are often in tension: vote equality, that each vote has equal influence, and representational equality, that each elected official represents equal numbers of people. The electoral standard of “one person, one vote” ensures representational equality, and that often ensures vote equality. This relationship fails, however, under certain demographic conditions, namely, when a large, non-enfranchised population resides unevenly across jurisdictions. Then, representational equality is preserved and vote equality is violated. Prior to women’s suffrage, for example, western states had relatively fewer women than the remainder of the country, contributing to gross vote inequality, though rectified through extension of the franchise. Given recent high rates of immigration to some states, I ask whether the two values are in tension. I find that they are, and quantify the electoral consequences of this disjuncture at 13 House seats in 2010.

This work was cited in the Democratic National Committee’s amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case Evenwel v. Abbott. This research is also covered by Huffington Post.