After Covid Vaccines Partisan Death Rate Gap Widened: Study

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A new study published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the gap between Democrats and Republicans dying from Covid-19 increased significantly after the vaccines became widely available.

The study was conducted by three Yale University researchers, Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, and Jason L. Schwartz, and looked at “excess deaths” in Florida and Ohio broken down by partisan affiliation.

“Excess death” refers to the number of Covid-19 fatalities during a given period of time that exceeded the number of deaths expected based on previous modeling.

“In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” the researchers explained.

“Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021 — after vaccines were widely available — the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021,” they concluded.

National Bureau of Economic Research study graphic showing excess deaths by political affiliation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats,” notes the study’s summary, which adds:

Post-vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.

The researchers looked at 577,659 death records in Ohio and Florida between January 2018 and December 2021. Those records were then matched with each decedent’s 2017 voter file, which allowed the researchers to identify the location and partisan affiliation of each individual. As a result, the study does not include the vaccination history of each individual.

The researchers predicted the trend will continue, writing, “If these differences in vaccination by political party affiliation persist, then the higher excess death rate among Republicans is likely to continue through the subsequent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Notably, the U.S. remains the only wealthy nation to have widely distributed Covid-19 vaccinations that has had more deaths after they became available.

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