Monmouth Poll: By Wide Margins, Virginians Support Requiring Face Masks in School, Requiring Vaccines for Schoolkids Age 12+

New polling on Virginia, from Monmouth University, has some interesting findings (bolding added for emphasis):

• “Two-thirds of Virginia voters, including parents of school-age children, support the state’s school mask mandate and many support Covid vaccinations for age-eligible children. About two-thirds of registered voters (67%) – and parents specifically (64%) – support the requirement that students, teachers, and staff in Virginia schools wear face masks this year.”
• “In terms of a possible vaccine mandate, a majority of voters (58%) would approve of requiring children age 12 and older to be vaccinated in order to attend school in person. Just over half (52%) support the same requirement for school children under 12 years old if a vaccine is authorized for that age group in the coming months. Parents of school-age children are slightly less supportive – 49% approve of requiring vaccines for the middle to high school-age group and 43% would support that requirement for younger children – but there is still a measurable amount of support for vaccine mandates for school attendance.”
• “If you watch the news coverage you may think that the vast majority of Virginia parents want no masks and no remote learning options, when that is clearly not the case. These are just the most vocal folks. In fact, nearly half of all parents would support a vaccine mandate for school children.”
• “A majority (53%) of registered voters approve of the University of Virginia’s decision to disenroll students who refused to report whether they got a Covid vaccine or did not apply for an exemption. Another 43% disapprove.”
• “46% of voters say state government measures to slow the virus have been appropriate, while 27% say they have not gone far enough and 24% say these measures have gone too far. A clear majority (64%) support reinstituting general face mask and social distancing guidelines in the commonwealth, while 32% are opposed. Support for reinstating these measures comes from majorities of Democrats (89%) and independents (60%), but only 37% of Republicans.”
• 42% “say Virginia has been doing better than other states in handling the pandemic than say it has done worse (11%). Another 42% say it has been doing about the same.”
• “Northam’s overall job rating stands at 48% approve and 42% disapprove, but he gets better marks on the pandemic specifically. Nearly 6 in 10 (59%) Virginia voters say Northam has done a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak while just 27% say he has done a bad job.”
• “The Monmouth University Poll also finds that President Joe Biden earns a slightly negative job rating from Virginia voters – 46% approve and 49% disapprove.“