The individual attitudes of partisans seems to have affected policy in important ways.
Yet, over the summer, deaths per capita were higher in states like Florida and Texas, while plummeting in the Northeast. For example, New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area were especially hard-hit in April, with roughly 20% of the population eventually becoming infected, according to CDC estimates of antibody prevalence. Notably, these gaps in attitudes and behaviors persisted even after the disease burden shifted from being disproportionately high in counties won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the spring to counties won by President Trump over the summer. Jonathan Rothwell and Hannah Van Drie Monday, April 27, 2020 We also show that political party support is usually the most important variable in explaining these attitudes and behaviors, dominating county-level infections and other demographic variables. Using Gallup data, we document large and persistent partisan gaps in levels of fear over COVID-19, social distancing, mask wearing, visiting work, and the scope of expected economic and social distribution (Figure 1). The “Hannity Effect” illustrates a much larger pattern: Access to information is heavily distorted by our media diet, and that has real consequences for attitudes and behavior. More Hannity viewers predicted more infections at the county level. In survey data, they find that Hannity’s viewers waited longer before significantly changing their behavior compared to Carlson viewers, who were otherwise demographically similar. Tucker Carlson emphasized the disease’s severity while Sean Hannity downplayed it, according to striking research from Leonardo Bursztyn and his co-authors. When the pandemic started, two of the most popular news programs-both on Fox-covered it very differently. Polarization of individual attitudes and behaviors Bad COVID policy, distorted by partisanship, has cost lives and jobs, as our work shows. State leaders have missed opportunities to adopt mask ordinances, limit gatherings in the most dangerous indoor spaces, and allow businesses to operate safely. Ideally, public health policy would be driven by theory and evidence, not the relative power of partisans. adults surveyed repeatedly by Gallup from March through August, as well as publicly available policy and political data from a variety of sources. In the paper, we analyze survey responses from just under 50,000 U.S.
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