A county's vote for Trump is predictive of its Covid-19 vaccination rate, and more generally of its death rate

Screenshot of interactive plotter graphs shows how a higher vote for Donald Trump in 2020 correlates with a lower Covid-19 vaccination rate (left) and a higher Covid-19 death rate. In this example, Jackson County, Kentucky, which went 89% for Trump, follows trendlines created by the averages. For a larger image, click on it; for the interactive database, click here.

"Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from Covid-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden," Daniel Wood and Geoff Brumfiel report for NPR. 

Overall Covid-19 death rates were 2.7 times higher in counties where at least 60% of the votes went for Trump, and the higher the vote share for Trump, the higher the Covid death count. Recently, Covid-related deaths in the reddest counties were 5.5 times higher than the bluest counties, Wood and Brumfiel report. The data start in May since that's when vaccinations became widely available. 

"The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk," NPR reports. "The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death-rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate. The analysis only looked at the geographic location of Covid-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person taken by the disease remains unknowable. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected."

Republicans are the largest demographic group of unvaccinated Americans, and Kaiser Family Foundation polling shows that they're highly likely to mistrust official information sources and be exposed to misinformation. Foundation Vice President Liz Hamel said political affiliation is now the strongest indicator of vaccination: "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

"It was not always this way," NPR reports. "Earlier in the pandemic, many different groups expressed hesitancy toward getting vaccinated. African Americans, younger Americans and rural Americans all had significant portions of their demographic that resisted vaccination. But over time, the vaccination rates in those demographics have risen, while the rate of Republican vaccination . . . has flatlined at just 59%, according to the latest numbers from Kaiser . . . 91% of Democrats are vaccinated."