An online ad campaign featuring former President Donald Trump boosted vaccination rates in counties where rates of COVID-19 shots were lowest, according to research published Monday.
In a campaign aimed at more than 1,000 counties across the U.S., researchers created an ad using a Trump appearance on Fox News telling people to get vaccinated, and then during October last year ran the video on YouTube in places with low vaccination rates. In the counties where the ad was shown, about 103 more vaccinations were given, on average, than in counties that didn’t get ads.
Trump voters, particularly in rural counties, have been some of the hardest to reach with vaccination despite the former president’s role in helping speed the development of COVID-19 shots during his administration. Many of those areas have been hard hit by the virus, recording large numbers of deaths, yet their vaccination rates lag the rest of the country.
