We all know that wearing masks became a partisan divide during the pandemic, with right-wingers refusing to wear masks, and QAnon folks swearing that the masks were part of a conspiracy. The more fiercely Trumpian a county, the less likely you would see masks in general use.
And now, Kentuckians are doing the same thing with getting vaccinated.
I pulled the latest vaccination numbers by county from the New York Times web site, and saw that while the overall state is at 40% vaccinated, many, many counties are under that number. (The average gets pulled up by the higher vaccination rates in the more populous counties.)
Then, I pulled the Trump vote percentage in the 2020 election, by county, from Politico.
Finally, I put them all into a table, and checked the correlation coefficient. There was a negative correlation of -0.689, which is relatively strong. (A negative correlation means that the more likely you are to vote for Trump, the less likely you are to get vaccinated.)
And, just for fun, I created a chart as well, and added a trendline. It’s pretty clear.
Trump’s failed leadership in the pandemic, including his unwillingness to put in place a national mask mandate, not only caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths due to COVID. It continues to affect his followers in multiple negative ways – and refusing to get a vaccine is one of those ongoing negative impacts.
For years, I heard how Republicans were the “adults in the room.” It seems apparent that the adults are the ones getting vaccinated … and Republicans aren’t among them.
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The Data
[supsystic-tables id=20]