New Poll: Voters Reject Kennedy’s Vaccine Overhaul as Independents Sour on Federal Health Leadership

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kara Zupkus (224) 456-0257

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  A new national survey of likely voters finds that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine agenda is out of step with a broad bipartisan majority of Americans. Americans want continued access to vaccines and vaccine recommendations free from political influence, and support the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) remaining intact.

The poll, conducted by Echelon Insights and released by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), found recent policy proposals from HHS to be out of step with a wide swath of voters across party lines. Key highlights from the poll include:

• 89% of voters say vaccine recommendations should be set by independent panels of medical experts, free from political influence, rather than by presidential appointees.
• 91% say it is important that families retain access to safe, FDA-approved vaccines.
• 73% are confident in the safety of vaccines.
• 59% of independents disapprove of Secretary Kennedy’s job performance

VICP is a longstanding program established to compensate patients for adverse reactions to vaccines, through a streamlined process. Once voters learn what it does, 66% call VICP a good idea, including 72% of Republicans, 61% of independents, and 64% of Democrats.

When informed of Secretary Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul VICP based on unproven science, 53% of voters, and 59% of independents, call that a bad idea. Majorities also oppose his removal of members of the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccinations before their terms end (59% oppose) and his replacement of members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) with vaccine skeptics (58% oppose).

“Voters across the political spectrum are asking for our leaders to keep politics out of vaccine decisions, protect access, and leave the VICP program alone,” said David Williams, President of TPA. “Independent voters don’t like what they’re seeing from Secretary Kennedy and his misguided agenda, and they’ve lost trust in the people charged with protecting their health.”

“Less than five months until the midterm elections, it’s clear that Secretary Kennedy’s agenda is making it harder for the GOP to build the support needed to push President Trump’s broader regulatory reform agenda,” Williams said. “The country is not asking for many of the policies HHS bureaucrats have pushed over the past 17 months, and RFK Jr.’s failed leadership is creating clear vulnerabilities among the independent voters who will determine who controls Congress.”

View the full topline data here.

About this Survey

This survey was conducted by Echelon Insights and sponsored by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. It was fielded online from June 10 to 12, 2026 among a non-probability sample of 1,009 voters in the Likely Electorate nationwide, drawn from the Lucid sample exchange and matched to the L2 voter file to verify registration. The sample was weighted to modeled turnout and demographics such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, and party. Calculated the way it would be for a random sample and adjusted to incorporate the effect of weighting, the margin of sampling error is ± 3.5 percentage points.

About the Taxpayers Protection Alliance

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis, and dissemination of information on the government’s impact on the economy.