via VICE: Almost Twice as Many Republicans Died From COVID Before the Midterms Than Democrats
The authors of a new study can’t say if this impacted the midterms, but say that it’s “plausible given just how stark the differences in vaccination rates have been, among Democrats and Republicans.”
COVID-19 is killing more Republicans than Democrats, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, titled Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic, used voter registration and death records to answer a question: is there a link between political affiliation and rates of COVID related death in the U.S.?
The short answer is yes. “In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” the study said. “Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021—after vaccines were widely available—the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021.”
The study attributes this to the vaccine uptake disparity between Republicans and Democrats, which has been widely documented as more Republicans refused to take the vaccine; the most vocal anti-vax voices were Republican politicians and some conservative news outlets: “The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the study notes.
Is it possible that anti-vax Republicans dying from COVID affected the midterms? “If Republicans are dying in increased numbers relative to their Democratic colleagues in a political climate where there are so many close electoral contests, could that have been the decider in a particular particular race?” Jason L. Schwartz, an associate professor of Health Policy at the School of Public Health at Yale and one of the authors of the study, told Motherboard. “Our study can't answer that. But it certainly seems plausible given just how stark the differences in vaccination rates have been, among Democrats and Republicans.”
Philip Bump at the Washington Post looked at this same data and posits that COVID deaths did not affect the midterms and suggests that even asking the question is a “grotesque effort to score political points.” However, with so many House races still too close to call and voting margins razor-thin in many important races, it is worth trying to understand if COVID-19 and vaccine rates had any effect on the races.
Schwartz said that he and his colleagues wanted to look at something that hadn’t been carefully studied before. “Could we actually drill down at the level of individuals—in this case of individual death rates—and see whether or not politicization could be linked to mortality,” he said. “So far, it looks like there really is a signal here, particularly linked to the availability of vaccines.”