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Republicans are 14 times more likely than Democrats to say the Covid-19 pandemic is over. Mobility data from Google backs this up, showing that many residents in red states are returning to stores, parks, supermarkets and more at levels not seen since the start of the pandemic.
But a closer look at the data — location information collected from millions of mobile phones — shows Republicans and Democrats are more alike than you’d expect once a crucial factor is considered: how much money they make.
It turns out that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to stay home.
Activity in grocery and pharmacy, national, compared to Jan. - Feb. 2020
All counties
This line shows how often U.S. residents went to grocery stores and pharmacies nationwide in 2021, compared to a pre-pandemic baseline. (It’s a running two-week average to smooth out small bumps and dips.)
Americans crossed over the baseline on May 8, the first day people frequented grocery stores as often as they did before the pandemic.
Let’s split that line into two — one showing the running average for counties who voted for Donald Trump, and another showing the same for Joe Biden counties. As you might expect, each set of counties is charting a different path, with Democratic communities lagging their Republican neighbors in returning to normal.
But it’s not as big of a difference as you might expect.
The data shows Biden counties were generally 5 percent less active than Trump counties. While Trump counties peaked above baseline levels briefly in early April, they didn’t stay above pre-pandemic levels until about a week before Biden counties hit the same mark.
The bigger difference is income.
Here, we’ve split the two partisan lines into four, separating out counties whose residents earn less than the median national household income, and those who earn more.
States that voted for Trump lifted mask restrictions months before Biden states. But higher-income Republican counties still did not return to baseline until almost two months after lower-income Republican counties.
In fact, higher-income Republican counties looked much more like higher-income Democratic counties than their lower-income counterparts.
Lower-income counties that voted for Biden and Trump returned to normal activities within two weeks of each other, and since then, their differences have only narrowed.
Higher-income Biden counties were the last to return to baseline activities and remain around 10 percent more conservative in grocery visits than the other groups.
This pattern holds true beyond supermarket visits. Across all other visits tracked by Google — retail, transit centers and workplaces — lower-income Trump counties are leading the return to baseline, followed closely by lower-income Biden counties.
Lower income Trump counties
Higher income Trump counties
Lower income Biden counties
Higher income Biden counties
Trump counties
Biden counties
Trump counties
Biden counties
Trump counties
Biden counties
Trump counties
Biden counties
What’s behind this income divide? Simply put, lower-income workers have fewer options to stay home.
Workers with low wages were six times less likely to be able to work from home, research shows. Although people with lower incomes generally have a higher risk of contracting Covid-19, they also thought they were more likely to run out of money because of the pandemic.
One study showed that essential workers, who worked jobs like grocery store clerks and pharmacy and convenience store employees, were more likely to earn household incomes of less than $40,000 than other workers who could do their jobs from home.
Mobility data from Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports. Demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Vote data from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Elections. Mobility trends were calculated using a 14 day rolling average. The day of earliest return to baseline was calculated using the first day the rolling average was above 0.