Why Republicans Faced a Greater Risk of Death Than Democrats in Late 2021

What You Need to Know

Yale researchers linked death data to party registration records for voters ages 25 and older in Florida and Ohio.
Before March 2020, both Republicans and Democrats in the data set had similar death rates.
An excess mortality gap appeared around October 2020, then grew much bigger in August 2021.

Some Republicans’ reluctance to get COVID-19 vaccinations led to a big gap between the total excess death rate for Republicans and Democrats in Florida and Ohio in late 2021, according to three Yale University researchers.

The overall excess death rates for Republicans ages 25 and older and Democrats ages 25 and older in those states were about the same up until April 2021, when all adults in those states were eligible to get COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers say.

The overall excess death rate for Republicans then increased to be about 5 percentage points higher than the overall excess death rate for Democrats, until a giant new wave of COVID-19 cases began, in August 2021. That month, the overall excess death rate was about 20% for Democrats and about 35% for Republicans.

In December 2021, the last month in the researchers’ data set, the overall excess death rate was about 10% for Democrats and more than 30% for Republicans.

Jacob Wallace of the Yale School of Public Health and two colleagues, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Jason Schwartz, have reported those findings in a working paper available at Arxiv.org. The paper is also available behind a log-in wall via the National Bureau of Economic Research.

What It Means

Wallace and his colleagues looked at data from just two states during a four-year period.  Some organizations — including the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — have contended that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines have been exaggerated and the risks minimized.

Wallace and his colleagues contend that their analysis shows that political affiliation has clearly affected mortality risk since COVID-19 vaccines became available.

“We estimate higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats after vaccines were widely available — and not before — and these differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates,” the researchers write.

“The results suggest that the well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republicans and Democrats have already had serious consequences for the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the United States,” the researchers add.

If the researchers’ results hold up to other researchers’ scrutiny, the paper may mean that agents and advisors might need to take clients’ attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines and other preventive measures into account when forecasting the clients’ life expectancy.