Voter Opinion about WHO Driven by Party Affiliation

Voter Opinion about WHO Driven by Party Affiliation
by Roger Bate at Brownstone Institute

As David Bell has pointed out often on these pages, the World Health Organization (WHO) needs reform. But will that reform happen? 

I’ve explained elsewhere my serious concerns about the US leaving the WHO, as President Trump intends. Anecdotally I’ve found that conservatives have a far lower opinion of it than liberals, and are supportive of President Trump’s move to withdraw the US from the WHO. But this suggests that at the very least even if the US withdraws from the WHO, a future Democratic President could simply rejoin, and the US will have weakened its influence.

I decided to test whether my assumptions based on anecdotal inquiries are backed up in a larger sampling. So I asked voters themselves about the WHO. 

Voter Surveys

The detailed research can be found here. I asked registered voters in Montgomery County, PA to comment on a series of statements about the World Health Organization. I also interviewed physicians in the same location.

As expected, Republicans had a far dimmer view of the WHO than Democrats. However, this was far from a universal finding. At least 30% of Republicans (65% of Democrats) agree that WHO health professionals aim to help nations improve health and at least a third of Democrats (70% of Republicans) agree that the WHO is too close to nations like China, and nearly two-thirds of Democrats (70% of Republicans) think the WHO is too close to the pharma industry and billionaire supporters.  

Republicans were more likely to agree that the WHO criticizes opinions it considers incorrect (46% versus 30% Democrats), although this disparity is not as great as I expected. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the polarization around Covid, it is the statements about the WHO’s response to Covid that show the greatest political divide. When asked if the WHO did its best during Covid with the information available at the time, 69% of Democrats either strongly agree or agree with that statement whereas only 24% of Republicans do. When asked if the WHO has a history of lying or covering up mistakes only 15% of Democrats thought that likely, whereas 43% of Republicans did. 

While far more Republicans (68%) agreed that the WHO is too corrupt to run a pandemic treaty, nearly a quarter of Democrats thought that too, and only a quarter of Democrats want it to run a treaty. 

In the unsolicited comments made by respondents, it is obvious that their opinions reflect the media sources they rely on. Democrats talking about “Conservative media lies” and Republicans decrying “coverups of the mainstream media.” 

As one would expect, physicians generally answered “not sure” less often than non-physician voters, and they are more likely to side with Democratic opinion than Republican opinion. Nearly half of physicians thought the WHO should run a pandemic treaty (markedly higher than either group of non-physicians). 

Some physicians were quite strident in their comments to me about how the health profession, including the WHO, failed to give good advice and ignored evidence about Covid origin. Like other health authorities, some physicians told me that the WHO promoted poor policy advice like vaccine mandates. A few were also adamant that the WHO and others had done their best and were angry at Republican “lies” about Covid and vaccines. Ironically, the physicians’ comments to me were as polarized as the comments from non-physicians.

In the conversations I had with voters, most worrying of all is that neither Republicans nor Democrats really want WHO reform. There is hope that some want improvements in the organization but in the main, the former want to leave the WHO and the latter want to remain.

What Conclusions Can Be Drawn?

The overriding conclusion is that Republicans are far more distrustful of the WHO than Democrats, seeing it as part of the problem when it comes to health advice. Differing opinions were far from universal, with some Republicans having positive views of the WHO and vice versa. But statements about Covid showed the greatest disparity, with Democrats being more supportive of WHO motives and advice.

If one assumes Montgomery County is representative of the rest of the US, a big assumption I grant you, then this political divide points to various policy changes and an up-and-down relationship between the US and the WHO over the coming years. And a Democratic administration will look to rejoin the organization at the first opportunity. 

Voter Opinion about WHO Driven by Party Affiliation
by Roger Bate at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society