The Politics of COVID-19: Partisan Polarization about the Pandemic Has Increased, but Support for Health Care Reform Hasn’t Moved at All

Abstract

We investigate trends in public opinion before and during the COVID-19 pandemic on concern about the virus, efforts to combat its spread, and support for various health care policy reforms. Using data from more than 400,000 interviews covering every state in the country over a 1-year period, we demonstrate initially high levels of concern about the virus and support for restrictions to combat it across geography and political party. Over time, however, these sentiments fade, and a partisan divide opens up as Republican concern and support drops more quickly. We find little evidence that the pandemic has shifted opinions on health care reforms such as Medicare-for-all. We argue that the differences in these trends have more to do with messages from party leaders about the pandemic and less to do with the virus’s state-level infection rates. While nearly everyone has been affected in some way by the pandemic, for most voters, the pandemic’s challenges have not translated into a desire for more sweeping change to the nation’s health care system.