The political context of COVID-19 vaccination in Brazil: evidence from a nationwide population-based study
- Posted
- Server
- SciELO Preprints
- DOI
- 10.1590/scielopreprints.17941
We examined the association between political context and COVID-19 vaccination in Brazil by linking individual vaccination data from 33,320 participants in the nationally representative EPICOVID-19 II study with municipal electoral data from the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Municipal political context was measured by the proportion of valid votes for the Partido Liberal (PL) presidential candidate in the second round. Complete COVID-19 vaccination was defined as receipt of two or more doses. Higher municipal support for the PL candidate was associated with lower vaccination coverage (r = -0.37). Each 10-percentage-point increase in PL vote share was associated with lower odds of complete vaccination (OR 0.76; 95% CI 0.72–0.81). A weaker association was also observed for influenza vaccination (OR 0.88; 95% CI 0.82–0.95). These findings suggest that political and informational environments may influence vaccination behaviors and should be considered in future public health communication strategies, particularly in politically polarized settings.