The United States is in the midst of the second-highest year of measles cases since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated in this country, meaning that cases within the United States originated outside the country. As of May 8, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that in 2025, there have been over a thousand confirmed U.S. cases of measles and three confirmed deaths from measles. Because many cases go unreported, this number is considered an undercount. In contrast to the current outbreak, from the time the United States declared that measles was no longer endemic through last year (2000-2024), there’s been an average of about 180 measles cases a year.

The survey data comes from the 24th wave of a nationally representative panel of 1,653 U.S. adults, first empaneled in April 2021, conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by SSRS, an independent market research company. This wave of the Annenberg Science and Public Health Knowledge (ASAPH) survey was fielded April 15-April 28, 2025.