Skip to content

Thursday, Apr. 21, 2022

Does a new study prove blue states fared worse during the pandemic than red states?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
no

A recent study by free market advocate Committee to Unleash Prosperity suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrat-led states had worse economic outcomes while Republican-led states had worse health outcomes.

Comparing states' pre-pandemic unemployment with pandemic unemployment and adjusting for national-average industry composition, the study indicates that 9 of the top 10 economic performers had a Republican governor while the bottom 10 economic performers all had a Democratic governor.

In contrast, assessing states' age-adjusted excess mortality, 7 of 10 with the lowest death rates were led by Democratic governors while 8 of 10 with the highest death rates were led by Republican governors.

In a separate analysis of each state's pandemic performance, Politico similarly found that Democratic states, which embraced mask mandates and stay-at-home orders, averaged lower COVID-19 death rates, while Republican states, which imposed fewer pandemic restrictions, averaged less economic hardship. 

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.