Since the virus emerged, there have been only 59 days on which there were fewer new cases recorded in counties which ended up voting for President Biden in November than in counties which voted for Donald Trump. On every other day, it’s been Biden counties that have seen more cases.
As the pandemic unfolded last year, though, the picture was slightly different. Using the most recent data at that point — presidential results by county from 2016 — the country had reached a sort of stasis. About as many new cases were being discovered in counties which voted for Trump that year as voted for Hillary Clinton.
If we compare the two directly, you can see the shift. Defining blue counties as those that voted for Biden in 2020 as opposed to those that voted for Clinton four years before, blue counties make up an average of 5 percent more of the new cases on each day of the past year.
Why? The obvious answer is that Biden won more counties than Clinton did. But the specific shift is among counties which voted for Biden after voting Republican in 2012 and 2016. That group of counties shows up as light blue on the charts below and stands out noticeably on the percentage graph.
But it is also visible on the chart of actual new cases per day at left above. There’s a little bump about halfway through the year and then again at the end. About a third of that is Maricopa County, Ariz., the largest county which flipped to Biden after backing Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Arizona had a surge last summer that accounts for the first bump and, like most other states, saw another surge in November and December.
One result of the change in the 2020 election is to elevate the cumulative percentage of cases and deaths in blue counties as well. Since the outbreak began, 51 percent of cases and 53 percent of deaths were in counties Clinton won in 2016. Use 2020 numbers and those figures jump to 58 percent and 57 percent, respectively.
This doesn’t tell the whole story. There are a lot of factors at play in determining how quickly the virus spreads, including state-level and household-level decisions. But there’s also another, more important factor: population. There are more people in counties Biden won in 2020 than there are in counties Clinton won in 2016 — so of course cases in those counties will make up more of the total.
If we adjust for population, the effects of switching from 2016 to 2020 numbers are largely eliminated. There was a shift from cases and deaths being more heavily weighted in blue counties to red counties over the course of the pandemic, with red counties still seeing more deaths as a function of population. (The shift of Maricopa County can be seen in the top-right graph below; it’s the secondary bump next to the initial cases surge in the 2020 vote totals.)
That’s the real picture here. Since the pandemic first emerged, there have been 7,279 cases for every 100,000 residents of blue counties (using 2020 results) and 8,113 cases for every 100,000 residents of red ones. There have been 1,183 deaths for every million residents of blue counties and 1,295 deaths for every million people in red counties. Red counties overtook blue ones in cases in mid-October and in deaths two months later.
Yes, there have been more cases in places that voted for Biden. But it’s places which voted for Trump where the effects have been worse.
January 30, 2021 at 05:26AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/29/coronavirus-has-spread-more-widely-blue-areas-hit-red-america-harder/
The coronavirus has spread more widely in blue areas — but hit red America harder - The Washington Post
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment