by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 12:48 PM ET, Mon September 13, 2021
A new Gallup poll published on September 3 has found that the majority of Americans support vaccination mandates on airplanes, hotels, dine-in restaurants and to attend large events.
Using data from three different polls on the same subject over the months of April, May and August 2021, the data suggests that the number of Americans who would feel safer and even prefer vaccination mandates or verification is increasing.
Sixty-one percent of Americans polled want a vaccination requirement for air travel. This percentage has grown steadily since April when that number was at 57 percent. Vaccination requirements on airplanes have been a contentious debate for a while, with the rates of violent confrontations between passengers and airline stewards reaching a record high, partly because of the federal transportation's mask mandate. Vaccination requirements on air travel could cause the rate of these incidents to lower.
A recent study done by Delta has also found that pre-flight COVID-19 testing does help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Fifty-three percent of Americans now favor a vaccination requirement to stay in hotels, up nearly ten percent from April. Some countries in Europe are now requiring guests at hotels to provide their vaccination status in order to check in.
Several large events in America have already been requiring attendees to show proof of vaccination or provide a recent negative COVID-19 test result to attend, or at least have instituted mask mandates. Los Angeles was one of the first cities to mandate that attendees at all of its mega-events, both indoors and outdoors, must wear masks.
Back in April, 55 percent of Americans approved of these measures, but it's grown since then. August's data shows that 58 percent of Americans approve of these measures, and desire more of them.
Some Hawaiian islands are beginning to mandate vaccination verification to enter certain indoor venues, like restaurants. New Orleans has mandated this same thing back in August prior to Hurricane Ida. Fifty-three percent of Americans now support this, too, up thirteen percent from April.
Overwhelmingly, the percentage of Americans who support these measures are fully vaccinated themselves, although at least twenty percent of those who are unvaccinated also support these measures.
It would seem that political leanings also help inform Americans' perspectives. The large majority, around 80-90 percent of those who identify themselves as Democrats support these vaccination requirements. In the Republican category, 21-30 percent approved of these measures. Around 40-50 percent of Independents also support these measures.
While Americans rarely agree on anything, the majority of Americans do in fact support better measures to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its more virulent variants. We have already begun to see more vaccine mandates across companies and to attend certain large events, so it is likely more of these will come in the near future.
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