Conservatives are now the dominant anti-vaxxers

Historically, anti-vaxxers were a minority balanced across the political spectrum, but now conservatives are much worse

For the past few years, study after study has been showing a decrease in both conservative support for and rates of vaccination. This appears to be related to the current trend of conservatives toward an anti-science agenda in several countries and possibly the introduction of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine.

Historically, the myth was that liberals were more likely to be anti-vaxx and conservatives were more likely to be pro-vaxx. It was seen, mostly by people on the right, as a hippie thing. The reality is that support of vaccination and rates of vaccination were equally spread across the spectrum. Until recently.

The most recent peer-reviewed study explicitly on the subject was published in January of 2018. The influence of political ideology and trust on willingness to vaccinate by Baumgaertner et al in PLOS One (open access, impact factor 3.54) has the following to say:

we asked respondents to place themselves on a five-point scale ranging from “very liberal” to “very conservative.”…