Using conditional inference to quantify interaction effects of socio-demographic covariates of US COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has become a major issue in the U.S. as vaccine supply has outstripped demand and vaccination rates slow down. At least one recent global survey has sought to study the covariates of vaccine acceptance, but an inferential model that makes simultaneous use of several socio-demographic variables has been lacking. In this article, we present such a model using US-based survey data collected by Gallup. Our study agrees with the global survey results in some respects, but is also found to exhibit significant differences. For example, women and people aged between 25-54 were found to be more vaccine hesitant. Our conditional inference tree model suggests that trust in government, age and ethnicity are the most important covariates for predicting vaccine hesitancy, and can interact in ways that make them useful for communication-based outreach, especially if conjoined with census data. In particular, we found that the most vaccine hesitant individuals were those who identified as Black Republicans with a high school (or lower) education and lower income levels, who were involuntarily unemployed and trusted in the Trump administration.

Why we can’t talk openly about race: The impact of race and partisanship on respondents’ perceptions of intergroup conversations

Conversations about race-specific issues with interracial conversation partners can be important to combat prejudice and foster mutual understanding. Using a national U.S. sample of 201 Black Democrats, 199 Black Republicans, 200 White Democrats, and 200 White Republicans, this study examined the role that race and partisanship play in individuals’ desire to have political discussions about race-specific topics with racial outgroups. Findings indicate that Blacks in general expected more negative outcomes of race talk with racial outgroups, and Republicans were more likely to attempt to avoid interracial conversations about race. However, these findings were qualified by an interaction between race and partisanship such that White Democrats anticipated fewer negative outcomes from cross-race conversations about race than all other subgroups, and Black Democrats expected more negative outcomes than all other subgroups. Black and White Republicans did not differ from one another and fell roughly between the two Democratic subgroups. Nonetheless, it was White Republicans who were most likely to want to avoid race-specific conversations with cross-race discussion partners, rating significantly more avoidant than Black Republicans and White Democrats, but not Black Democrats.

Neutrality Summer

The secessionists and their allies in the press chafed under neutrality. They charged that the unionists were using neutrality as a cover to build support for entering the war on the Union side. The secessionists suffered another hard blow at the polls on June 20, when unionist candidates won nine of Kentucky’s ten seats in the congressional elections. The Southern sympathizers and their newspaper friends pinned their last hopes on the August elections for the state legislature, in which all 100 house seats and half of the 38 senate seats were on the line. Meanwhile, as chances for a Confederate Kentucky melted in the summer heat, some Confederate papers cooled their secessionist ardor and seemed to acquiesce in neutrality, at least for the time being. Neutrality, they reasoned, was better than fighting for the North. But the secessionists stuck to their argument that the “Black Republicans” would destroy slavery and make African Americans and whites equal in Kentucky. The Union Party won its biggest victory yet in the state elections. Thus emboldened, the unionists supported Camp Dick Robinson, a recruiting station for Union army volunteers in central Kentucky. The state was on the verge of abandoning neutrality and fully embracing the Union war effort.

No Longer Pliant Tools: Urban Politics and Conflicts over African American Partisanship in 1880s Boston, Massachusetts

During the 1880s, black Bostonians engaged deeply in urban electoral politics, and debates over partisanship became discussions over the place of African Americans in the United States body politic. They agreed that having a political party respond to one’s needs and interests was part of being a full and equal citizen, but divided over how best to achieve this vision. Loyal black Republicans hoped to motivate the party from within. So-called African American independents, however, broke away from Republicans and expected both major parties to earn their votes. They rejected the idea that they owed any party loyalty or unanimity based on past deeds. Focusing on the Massachusetts gubernatorial reelection campaign of Democrat Benjamin Butler in 1883, this article shows how, in their struggle for equality, black voters of either position saw urban electoral politics as an invaluable tool to achieve full citizenship protections and exercise black political power.