State Government Party Control and COVID

Keywords: COVID Pandemic, State Government, Political Party, Public Health Policy
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 21

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious public health challenge confronting
American citizens and their governments in more than a century. Millions of Americans have
been sickened and about three-quarters of a million have died because of COVID virus
infections. Much pubic attention has been directed at the role of the federal government in
efforts to confront and try to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. But state governments are
often closer to the day-to-day activities of most citizens and share popular sovereignty with the
federal government under the U.S. Federal System. The purpose of this poster display is to
examine county-level geographical patterns of Covid case rates in relation to state government
patterns of partisan control of state legislative chambers and of state governorships. State
legislators and state governors are popularly elected in each state, and political parties are among
the most important mobilizing instruments for legislative and executive elections. Pubic policy
decisions including those of relevance to public health policy are thus likely to exhibit partisan
colorations. There are manifest variations across the continental United States, but one very
striking pattern is that county-level average Covid case rates are found to be about one-fourth
higher in states led by Republican governors and Republican state legislative majorities. Why
this empirical pattern has been found deserves further investigation.