Vaccination rates drop significantly outside of the Portland metro area, according to results of a Oregon Values and Beliefs Center survey.

The online survey of Oregon residents showed the three counties making up the Portland area had a 77% vaccination rate. In the survey, 42% of those surveyed said they had not received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The survey results mirror those from December 2020 that gauged how likely someone would be to get the vaccine when it became available. The results were published at the same time Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced the state would follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indoor-mask guidelines.

People who identified as socially conservative were four times as likely to say they would not receive the vaccine than those who said they were liberal. What’s more, nearly all those surveyed who said they were college educated reported having received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“In Oregon, as in most other states, vaccination has become a politically polarized issue,” said Amaury Vogel, Oregon Values and Beliefs Center associate executive director. “Political ideology when it comes to social issues, is a strong predictor of whether or not a person has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.”

Some of the responses to the survey of why Central Oregon people would not become vaccinated included:

• “The jab is a psychotic global attempt to fulfill a depopulation agenda,” wrote one Crook County resident.
• “This is not a vaccine,” wrote a Deschutes County resident. “It is an experimental gene therapy drug. I chose not to be a guinea pig.”
• Another Crook County resident said he had survived severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003.

As of Thursday, the Oregon Health Authority reported that 130,981 people have been fully vaccinated or are in progress in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties. That translates to about 59% of the population who are 18 and older in the three Central Oregon counties, according to the OHA data.

“Oregonians who remain unvaccinated share the same reasons as being the most influential in their decision not to get vaccinated: Long- and short-term side effects and the concerns that the vaccine was developed too quickly,” Vogel said.

The survey conducted July 9-14 of 1,464 residents has a margin of error for the full sample ranging from plus or minus 1.5% to plus or minus 2.6%, depending on the response category for any given question.

The Oregon Values and Voices project, a nonpartisan charitable organization, has partnered with Pamplin Media Group, EO Media Group and the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center. EO Media Group owns newspapers in Oregon and Washington state, including The Bulletin.