Poll: Republicans more likely to believe measles misinformation

As an outbreak of measles continues to spread in Texas, there’s a new poll out from KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, showing how much misinformation people are seeing about the disease. Two children in Texas have died in the outbreak, and another death in New Mexico is linked to the disease.

Pollsters asked about three false claims: that the measles vaccine is more dangerous than the disease, that the vaccine causes autism, and that vitamin A can prevent a measles infection. None are true.

But a significant proportion of adults polled thought they might be true. KFF found a clear political divide in their poll's results — that Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to lean toward believing misinformation about measles — and that parents are more likely to believe measles misinformation, too.

Among parents who said that at least one of the false claims was probably or definitely true, one in four also said they’d skipped or delayed some recommended vaccines for their children.