abstract
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) play a central role in responding to communicable disease threats. Its authority to do so, however, has recently met significant political and legal opposition. Unpacking the dynamics of public support for CDC authority is an important question, as doing so can provide insight into whether policymakers might have an incentive to expand (or curtail) the agencys regulatory powers. In a demographically representative survey of 5,483 US adults, we find that most Americans support the CDCs role in responding to health crises, although self-identified conservatives are less likely to do so. Consistent with the idea that opposition to CDC-authority may result (in part) from receptivity to elite anti-CDC rhetoric, the effect of ideology holds when accounting for respondents limited government and anti-expert attitudes; an effect we replicate in nationally representative data from the American National Election Study (ANES). Encouragingly, though, we find via a novel survey experiment that emphasizing the CDCs central role in combating the spread of COVID-19 is associated with significantly stronger levels of support on the ideological right. We conclude by discussing how these findings might influence effective health communication in the face of mounting political and legal challenges to CDC regulatory authority.