Democrat presidential candidate's Joe Biden sowing discord and distrust in the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine is working, as a majority of Americans in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll have no confidence in President Donald Trump's seal of approval of it.
An overwhelming majority of Americans (69%) do not have confidence in Trump vouching for the vaccine, including 53% having no confidence at all, according to ABC News.
Biden is even creating a new-wave group of anti-vaxxers. Just 9% have a great deal of confidence in Trump's vouching for the effectiveness of the vaccine and only 18% have "a good amount" of confidence, according to the poll.
While a majority says they will likely get inoculated by "a safe and effective vaccine," even that number has dropped 10 points from 74% in May to 64% in mid-September.
This anti-vaxxer campaign is more of an anti-Trump campaign, though, because the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci still has the confidence of 62% and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the confidence of 61%.
That trumps the 52% confidence in drug companies – who actually develop, test, and produce the vaccine, not Trump.
The ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted Sept. 18-19, but with a relatively small sample size of 528 American adults. GOP poll critics note a sample of likely voters is a far more representative sample of an election cycle, not mere U.S. adults – but it is cheaper to poll mere adults and tends to be more favorable to Democrats.
The small sample size has a high margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.