Virus spreads to Republican areas

Surge in red state cases could mean political fallout

Coronavirus first spread in the United States as a mostly coastal and big-city scourge, sparing many rural areas, small towns and even small cities. Translated into US political geography: The virus hit Democratic areas first.

No more. An Associated Press analysis of coronavirus case data shows the virus has moved — and is spreading quickly — into Republican areas, a new path with broad potential political ramifications.

States that President Donald Trump won in the 2016 election account for about 75 per cent of the new cases, a trend that has accelerated since the end of May. Counties that voted for Trump in 2016 have seen cases and deaths rising — now seeing an impact nearly even with counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The virus’s spread into red American could scramble partisan divisions over the disease. In the first phase, the virus was an undeniable reality for many Democrats, and it largely fell to Democratic governors and mayors to issue the strictest stay-at-home orders that helped slow the economy to a crawl.

Trump’s base, meanwhile, wasn’t so directly affected. His supporters have been less likely to support preventive measures, more likely to believe dangers were exaggerated and less likely to worry about friends or family contracting the virus. Some Republican governors followed the president’s lead, taking longer to issue stay-at-home orders, making the orders less strict when they did, and then more eagerly relaxing the limits on business operations in late April and May.

“We are now having 40-plusthousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, and so I am very concerned,” said Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health. —AP

Already the latest surge is forcing some GOP governors to reverse course. It remains unclear whether it will also force GOP voters to reassess their opinion on the virus and their leaders’ handling of the crisis.

One clear pattern: a state’s governor seems to matter. New cases in states with Republican governors, regardless of how those states voted in 2016, now considerably outpace those in states run by Democrats. That circumstance comes after months of trending away from the initial analysis, when Democratic states were the hotspots. That trend roughly reflects how the two parties’ governors have approached the pandemic.

GOP governors generally have leaned more heavily in favour of lighter government restrictions on social gatherings and business operations. Democratic governors, on average, have embraced stricter restrictions and more forcefully advocated for caution.

The pattern is repeated when looking at deaths.

States with Republican governors have seen an increase as an overall share of the national measure.

Democratic-run states, meanwhile, have dropped over time.

In recent weeks, there’s been rough parity and smaller spikes and drops between the two groups of states. But it’s another notable correlation between the public health outcomes and the policies governors have chosen. —AP