With a lack of leadership at the federal level, many of the major policy decisions responding to the COVID-19 pandemic have been left to the states. As a result, governors have implemented a wide range of policy responses. With President Trump and other Republican leaders seeking to downplay the severity of the virus, attitudes toward the pandemic have diverged sharply between Democrats and Republicans. Leading public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have argued that this level of partisanship and divisiveness are partly to blame for the United States’ inability to get the virus under control.
With all of this in mind, it’s worth taking a deeper look into how each state has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how that may be related to the volume of cases and deaths experienced by that state. To explore this further, the dashboard below combines data on COVID-19 cases and deaths by state, with information on when each state implemented key policy decisions. Specifically, the dashboard includes data from the COVID-19 US State Policy Database to show when states issued stay-at-home orders, relaxed/ended stay-at-home orders, closed non-essential businesses, began the reopening process and issued face mask mandates for public-facing employees and/or all individuals in public spaces.1
The dashboard includes eight different metrics for cases and deaths that can be selected using the first dropdown menu on the right. This dropdown menu allows you to view the data based on the following dimensions:
- Metric: Cases or Deaths2 (includes both confirmed and probable cases/deaths)
- Aggregation: Cumulative or New/Daily (using a 7-day moving average of new cases/deaths)
- Population Adjustment: Unadjusted or Adjusted (expressed per 1 million residents)
Additionally, the dashboard allows you to view any of these metrics for any individual state or any combination of states. The second dropdown menu on the right allows you to select the state(s) that you’d like to see in the dashboard. The legend indicates the color of the line associated with each state.
Finally, the dots on a state’s line indicate the dates that a key policy intervention was implemented. By hovering over a state’s line on the graph, you can see the full list of dates for that state’s key policy decisions.
On account of the politicization of the virus response and the large role governors have played in policy decision-making, it’s worth taking a deeper look into how governors’ responses have differed by party. To that end, the table below provides a summary of how states with Democratic governors have responded, as compared to states with Republican governors.
The table indicates that more Democratic governors issued stay-at-home orders, closed non-essential businesses and issued face mask mandates than their Republican counterparts. Among governors who implemented these measures, Democratic governors acted earlier and left the measures in place longer than Republican governors, on average (with the exception of face mask mandates for public-facing employees, where Republican governors acted earlier, on average).
Face mask mandates for all individuals appear to be one policy measure in particular that has diverged along partisan lines. While all but one of the 25 total Democratic state leaders (24 Democratic governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C.) have implemented face mask mandates for all individuals, 15 out of 26 Republican governors have declined to do so. Among the governors of both parties who have done so, Democratic governors implemented these measures almost a month earlier than Republican governors, on average.
Moving beyond policy interventions, we can also look at the trajectory of the virus in states that are controlled by Democratic governors as compared to Republican governors. To that end, the dashboard below aggregates the state-level data by reflecting the average of all states with Democratic and Republican governors, respectively. This dashboard includes the same eight metrics for viewing the data as the earlier dashboard.
States with Democratic governors were hit hardest by the virus initially, with higher values of new cases per capita than states with Republican governors, on average. However, this dynamic flipped around the start of June, when the rate of new cases per capita started to increase much faster in states with Republican governors, on average, and this dynamic remained consistent throughout the duration of this chart. In terms of cumulative cases per capita, states with Republican governors surpassed states with Democratic governors, on average, in late July.
The data for deaths follow the same general pattern as with cases, though the magnitudes differ considerably. The spike in new deaths per capita was significantly higher among states with Democratic governors in the early months of the outbreak, as compared with the corresponding spike among states with Republican governors more recently. As a result, cumulative deaths per capita remain higher among states with Democratic governors, on average, though the gap is narrowing over time.
Conclusion
To be sure, the framing of this analysis by the political party of a state’s governor is just one of many ways to break down the data. These dashboards should not be construed to overstate the role of governors in a state’s experience with the virus. While we are still learning about the spread of COVID-19, early research indicates that an array of factors outside of governors’ control, such as weather, may play a large role in the spread and lethality of the virus. Additionally, even if governors implement policies, research shows that individuals’ propensity to comply with these policies varies by political party, age group and other factors. Further, some governors have faced legislative and legal challenges to policies they’ve implemented in response to COVID-19, stymying their ability to adopt further regulations, and in some cases, even overturning policies like stay-at-home orders.
With all of that being said, governors have still been the primary policy-making engine in the COVID-19 response. Additionally, there is good reason to believe these policy choices have a significant effect on the spread of the virus. With the increasing politicization of the virus response, it’s a logical extension to question whether a governor’s political party may be related to the trajectory of the virus in that state. While this analysis provides a preliminary look at this question, further research will be required to determine whether a causal effect may exist.
You can find the data and code used in this analysis here.
Photo by Morning Brew.
- It is worth briefly noting that even within a given policy intervention discussed here (e.g. stay-at-home orders), there is a significant degree of variability in terms of coverage, severity, enforcement mechanisms and other details. Creating a standardized database of policies that vary widely by state inherently requires decisions to be made on how to classify these policy interventions. For the purposes of this analysis, I have taken the data exactly as it appears in the database. Further information on the qualifications for each metric can be found in the files on the database’s Github page.
- There are a few states that show negative values of deaths on a few given dates in the dashboard. This reflects instances where a state revised down its death toll due to a change in the way they count deaths attributed to COVID-19 (e.g. Colorado in mid-May).