Death by political party: The relationship between COVID-19 deaths and political party affiliation in the United States

Abstract

This study explored social factors that are associated with the US deaths caused by COVID-19 after the declaration of economic reopening on May 1, 2020 by President Donald Trump. We seek to understand how county-level support for Trump interacted with social distancing policies to impact COVID-19 death rates. Overall, controlling for several potential confounders, counties with higher levels of Trump support do not necessarily experience greater mortality rates due to COVID-19. The predicted weekly death counts per county tended to increase over time with the implementation of several key health policies. However, the difference in COVID-19 outcomes between counties with low and high levels of Trump support grew after several weeks of the policy implementation as counties with higher levels of Trump support suffered relatively higher death rates. Counties with higher levels of Trump support exhibited lower percentages of mobile staying at home and higher percentages of people working part time or full time than otherwise comparable counties with lower levels of Trump support. The relative negative performance of Trump-supporting counties is robust after controlling for these measures of policy compliance. Counties with high percentages of older (aged 65 and above) persons tended to have greater death rates, as did more populous counties in general. This study indicates that policymakers should consider the risks inherent in controlling public health crises due to divisions in political ideology and confirms that vulnerable communities are at particularly high risk in public health crises.