A Voice of San Diego analysis of death certificates and public voter files reveals that partisan affiliation was a predictor of one\u2019s likelihood to perish during year two of the pandemic. Those who decline to identify with a party also saw a higher rate of death.
\nDuring the first year of the pandemic, Democrats died at higher rates than Republicans. But during the second year, as Covid vaccines became widely available, Republicans in San Diego County began dying at significantly higher rates than Democrats, a new analysis by Voice of San Diego found.
\nThat finding might sound familiar. But other prominent analyses only surmised Republicans died at higher rates, by comparing Covid death rates to voting patterns. Voice\u2019s analysis actually matched the names of people who died from Covid in San Diego County to their political party affiliation.
\nRepublicans were 39 percent more likely to die with Covid during year two of the pandemic, even after adjusting for the fact that they tend to be older than Democrats. Independent voters \u2014 who belong to no political party \u2014 were also 30 percent more likely to die than Democrats during the pandemic\u2019s second year.
\nIn all, at least 534 San Diego Republicans died in year two of the pandemic. During the same time, at least 405 Democrats died. But for every Republican in the county there are roughly 1.5 Democrats \u2014 which accounts for the widely varying death\u00a0rates.
\n\u201cIt disturbs me significantly,\u201d said Greg Cox, a Republican and former county supervisor, who helped lead the local response to Covid. \u201cDoes it surprise me? No, not really. I would assume it was because of the influence of some people in the Republican Party who made a concerted effort to convince people not to get vaccinated.\u201d
\nThe death rates roughly align with trends in vaccination rates across the country. In September 2021, 92 percent of Democrats reported being vaccinated. Among independents, 68 percent were vaccinated. And among Republicans, just 56 were vaccinated,\u00a0according to Gallup.
\nVoice\u00a0sued San Diego County\u00a0to get access to local Covid death certificates as part of its investigation. After winning the lawsuit, reporters spent months manually logging each one that listed Covid as a primary or contributing cause of death between March 2020 and March 2022. We then matched the name of each person who died to their voter record \u2014 if they had one listed on the county\u2019s public voter roll \u2014 to learn their actual political party.
\nPrevious reports have\u00a0analyzed Covid death rates\u00a0in counties that tend to vote Republican versus those that tend to vote Democratic. But those reports left unanswered the question of whether\u00a0actual Republicans\u00a0were dying at higher rates, or whether something else might be at play.
\nAnother study matched death records to voter rolls, but instead of looking specifically at Covid-related deaths, it focused on\u00a0\u201cexcess deaths\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a public health term for the number of deaths above and beyond those that normally occur. That study found excess deaths were 76 percent higher among Republicans.
\nResearchers and public health specialists interviewed by Voice pointed to vaccine resistance as the most obvious reason for the widely differing death rates in San Diego County.
\n\u201cThe vaccine was definitely at play in this,\u201d said Ming-Hsiang Tsou, a geography professor at San Diego State who\u00a0helped local officials analyze\u00a0how the virus spread. \u201cAttitudes towards vaccinations are hugely different among the political parties.\u201d
\nA previous analysis by Voice also found that\u00a0death rates shifted drastically\u00a0across the region during the second year of the pandemic, moving into more conservative-leaning areas like Lakeside and Santee. The finding was especially striking since death rates went down in virtually every other ZIP code in San Diego County after the arrival of vaccines.
\nRebecca Fielding-Miller, a public health professor at UC San Diego, said the difference in death rates might also be related to \u201ca whole behavioral package\u201d \u2014 including people\u2019s willingness to wear a mask or avoid indoor gatherings \u2014 that separated the two major political parties.
\nPeople are also increasingly socializing in a bubble with others who share their ideological perspective. That creates \u201can effect multiplier,\u201d as Fielding-Miller put it. People tend to make the same choices on masking or other Covid precautions as the others they\u2019re hanging out with. \u201cThe social norms reinforce one another,\u201d she said, \u201cand you are in a social network with much higher risks.\u201d
\nThe local death rates show Democrats were significantly more vulnerable to Covid than Republicans in San Diego County during the pandemic\u2019s first year. And on the whole, Democrats do share many characteristics with those whom the virus hit hardest. People of color, who are much more likely to be\u00a0registered as Democrats, are also more likely to\u00a0live in multi-generational housing\u00a0and\u00a0suffer from underlying health conditions. Democrats also are more likely to work\u00a0low-wage, public-facing jobs.
\nWhen comparing the change in death rates between years one and two, the differences between the parties become even more stark. Democrats\u2019 death rate dropped four times more than Republicans after vaccines became widespread.
\nThe death rate among Democrats dropped by roughly 53 percent between years one and two. It dropped just 13 percent for Republicans and 25 percent for independent voters.
\nMost independent voters actually lean one way or the other politically. Roughly 48 percent tend to support Democrats and 39 percent tend to support Republicans,\u00a0Pew found in 2018.
\nEven though independents are split ideologically, they do have one underlying characteristic that aligns with traditional Republican politics. Independents across the spectrum tend to express a greater distrust of government \u2014 which may have played a role in their willingness to receive the vaccine.
\n\u201cIt could really well be that the distrust translates into the public health arena,\u201d said Seth Hill, a political science professor at UCSD.
\nRepublican and Democratic trust in government, on the other hand,\u00a0tends to fluctuate depending on which party is in power, said Nicholas Boushee, a professor of political science at San Diego City College.
\nRepublicans lost control of the White House just as the vaccine was becoming widely available, which might have amplified their distrust. On top of that, the party\u2019s leader was sending out mixed messages, Boushee said.
\nDonald Trump took credit for the vaccine rollout and even called masks\u00a0\u201cpatriotic\u201d\u00a0at one point. But he also\u00a0questioned\u00a0whether they were effective at stopping the virus and\u00a0mocked his opponent\u00a0for wearing one.
\nSupervisor Nathan Fletcher, a Democrat, led the county\u2019s response to Covid, along with Cox, the former Republican supervisor. He remembered an early press conference at which Republicans and Democrats had been completely united on their response to the virus.<\/p>\n