WASHINGTON — Celinda Lake remembers watching a focus group of Republican voters in August when a mother of three children started to cry.
The woman, a lifelong Republican, was furious: One of her sons wasn’t yet eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine but needed to attend school in-person. And she blamed people who refused the vaccine for jeopardizing his health.
“‘Because of these people, he has to stay masked up, which isn’t good for him,’” Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, recounted the woman saying. “‘I’ll never forgive them.’”
