Source: Vote data from Harvard elections data repository, mask use from NY Times.
This is the obvious followup to my just-prior post.
Yep, even here, in the relatively sane Commonwealth of Virginia, heavily Republican counties tend to be lower-mask-use counties. Note that it’s not close to proportional (i.e., the trend isn’t a 45-degree line, even though both axes are percents.) I think that’s to some degree an artifact of survey methods. This was a large internet-based survey, and likely over-represents younger generations. By contrast, voters skew older than average. So the voter data doesn’t exactly match the survey data. Probably.
I guess I have to take this to the ultimate conclusion.
There’s no statistically significant relationship between percent voting Republican in 2016 and current case growth, in Virginia. There’s nothing magically bad, from a public health standpoint, about having voted Republican. There is something bad, from a public health standpoint, about not wearing masks. That’s as deep as it goes.
