Trump country is not as worried.
Study suggests efforts to limit spread of virus now defined by partisanship
WASHINGTON — People in parts of the country that voted for President Donald Trump have been less worried about COVID-19, especially as the coronavirus was first emerging in the U.S., a new study out of Rice University found.
The study comes as Trump pushes to reopen the economy, with the backing of Texas Republicans including Gov. Greg Abbott, who took preliminary steps Friday to reopen some businesses, while extending school closures.
The findings suggest that the coronavirus — and efforts to curb its spread — have fallen into the partisan divide, something that appears to be the case in Texas, where a group of conservatives, including an influential Texas activist, penned an open letter to Trump last week calling stay-athome orders “tyranny.”
“Even when — objectively speaking — death is on the line, partisan bias still colors beliefs about facts,” the study said. “Relying solely on compliance with voluntary suggested measures in the presence of different political views on the crisis may have limited effectiveness; instead, enforcement may be required to successfully flatten the curve.”
Counties with the most Trump voters saw far fewer Google searches about the virus, and social distancing was 40 percent less prevalent in those areas than in other counties, according to Rice business professor Yael Hochberg, who co-authored the study.
The study used internet search data and smartphone data to analyze average daily travel distance and visits to nonessential businesses over the last several weeks. It found that searches were low and travel was common in Trump country, especially in the early weeks of the outbreak.
Even as states began to issue stay-at-home mandates, the study found that counties that backed Trump in 2016 were slow to begin social distancing. Daily travel distance in those counties dropped by less than 7 percent, compared to a drop of more than 9 percent in daily travel in counties with fewer Trump voters.
“Only when the federal order to ‘slow the spread’ arrived from the White House do high Trump counties begin to catch up,” the study said.
The study also found that trend started to change after March 9, when it was announced that COVID-19 had struck the Conservative Political Action Committee meetings and that conservative politicians — including Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — were self-quarantined. This suggested that “their risk perceptions are affected not by changes in fundamental underlying risk, but rather by political-related interpretations of the risk.”
The study found that more people began searching for Fox News stories about the coronavirus after CPAC, “consistent with Fox News viewers playing catch-up once their ‘own’ are affected.”