Many states have legislatures and governors from the same party and voted for this party in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. These states have adopted quite different Covid management strategies. There are 14 solidly Democratic states and 21 solidly Republican states, leaving 15 states with some level of “mixed” political control and influence.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx#

https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president

https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

Fully Vaccinated, Age 18+

Democratic states average 80%, Republican states 66% and Mixed states 73%. The national average is 72%. Nevada (69%) is the only Blue state below 75%. Alabama, Wyoming and Mississippi have the lowest scores for the GOP at 59-60%. Florida has the highest rate at 75%. The split in world views is confirmed by this measure. The mixed group ranges from Louisiana and Georgia at 63% to Massachusetts (85%) and Vermont (86%).

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-pop18

Cumulative Death Rate / 100,000 Population

The overall death rate for the country is 256. The mixed states are similar at 265. The Democratic states average 221 deaths per 100K people. The Republican states average 282 deaths per 100K people. If the Republican states had the same rate as the Democratic states, they would have 59 fewer deaths per 100K people, for a cumulative total of 70,000. Economists use $10M as the value of a life in many cost-benefit calculations, so one measure of the difference is $700B.

California (196) and New York (227) drive the lower D result, but the Dems include higher fatality states such as Rhode Island (305) and New Jersey (344). The mixed states include some relatively high death rates in Michigan (315), Louisiana (329) and Arizona (350). The Republican group includes 3 states below the D average in Utah, Alaska and Nebraska, but 7 states at 300 or higher: Oklahoma, Indiana, West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100k

As the median age for Covid deaths is 75, an argument could be made that the $10M economic value of a human life is too high in this analysis.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge

Population density and the percentage of population aged 65+ did not have statistically material impacts on the pattern by political party control.

Which U.S. States Have the Oldest Populations?

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/density-data-text.html

Nonfarm Employment Recovery: Nov 2021 vs. Feb 2020

Overall employment is within 2% of the February, 2020 peak for the country as a whole. The “mixed” states have recovered to within 2.3% of the peak. The Democratic states are only at 96.4% of the peak, while the Republican states, on average, are just below breakeven at 99.9%. If the D states had the same level of recovery, there would be 1.8M jobs added in the recovery to date. At the recent median $1,000 per week wage, this would generate $94 billion of income annually.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t03.htm#

Click to access laus_03272020.pdf

Click to access tabled1_201502.pdf

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bls.gov%2Fsae%2Ftables%2Fannual-average%2Ftable-1-employees-on-nonfarm-payrolls-in-states-and-selected-areas-by-major-industry.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

I used the Feb 2015 to Feb 2020 period to generate a pre-Covid trend growth rate. This was 6.4% for the country, 5.4% for the mixed states, 7.0% for the D states and 6.7% for the R states. This indicates that the Republican faster recovery is not due to prior momentum. I used the 2020/2015 growth rate to create a solid estimate of the 2021/2020 recovery rate for each state (r = 0.63). It confirmed the 3%+ gap between the 2 parties was not due to prior trends. I also checked the percentage of 2019 employment in the leisure and hospitality sector, to see if this was driving the difference, but it did not have a material effect.

Mixed Political Control States

State	% Vaccinated 18+	Deaths/100K	Job Recovery
AZ	69	350	103
GA	63	304	100
KS	70	251	98
KY	66	283	98
LA	63	329	93
MD	82	215	97
MA	85	310	97
MI	67	315	96
MN	77	200	97
NH	77	157	97
NC	68	192	100
PA	75	307	96
VT	86	78	93
VA	80	186	98
WI	73	205	97

Democratic Party States

State	% Vaccinated 18+	Deaths/100K	Job Recovery
CA	79	196	97
CO	78	187	100
CT	86	274	96
DE	76	252	97
HA	86	79	88
IL	75	263	96
ME	86	126	96
NV	69	283	97
NJ	83	344	97
NM	79	298	96
NY	84	227	93
OR	77	140	98
RI	87	305	96
WA	80	136	101

Republican States

State	% Vaccinated 18+	Deaths/100K	Job Recovery
AL	59	343	99
AK	70	139	94
AR	62	314	100
FL	75	296	101
ID	63	241	105
IN	64	308	98
IA	71	263	97
MS	60	360	99
MO	64	277	99
MT	64	278	101
NE	73	184	100
ND	65	271	96
OH	66	273	96
OK	66	300	97
SC	65	293	99
SD	71	294	99
TN	63	322	100
TX	70	264	102
UT	74	125	106
WV	65	312	96
WY	60	276	95