Read on Twitter
Before the election, I set up a script to track the vote in places that had been hit hardest by COVID. I thought we’d see them shift away from Trump compared to 2016.
When I ran it Wednesday morning, I was pretty shocked. 1/ https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/06/930897912/many-places-hard-hit-by-covid-19-leaned-more-toward-trump-in-2020-than-2016
When I ran it Wednesday morning, I was pretty shocked. 1/ https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/06/930897912/many-places-hard-hit-by-covid-19-leaned-more-toward-trump-in-2020-than-2016
The states with the highest per capita deaths almost all shifted toward the president compared to four years ago. Many of these are small counties, but many are also in states like FL/GA/TX…. 2/
This isn’t to say - obviously - that more deaths caused more Trump votes. So we called up some smart political science people. Here’s some of what they said: 3/
"It's surprising to see that the president surged compared to 2016 in the areas that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic," says Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. 4/
"they may have been simpatico with the president's approach to the pandemic," which led people to do things like be less likely to wear masks and impose lockdowns to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Kousser says. 5/
“…the biggest determinant of people's worries about COVID-19 and their attitudes about COVID-19 is not where they live or the COVID-19 deaths in their area, but it is their partisanship," says Shana Gadarian, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse 6/
"Maybe the people in those areas were Republicans and conservatives and Trump supporters to begin with, and they were increasing their support for Trump, entirely unrelated to the pandemic," says Gary King, a Harvard University social scientist. 7/
"We just don't actually know, right?" King says. "It's a very important research question. We absolutely want to track that down and figure that out.” 8/8 </thread> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/06/930897912/many-places-hard-hit-by-covid-19-leaned-more-toward-trump-in-2020-than-2016
