There has been a fair amount of research looking at the apparent geographic variation in “excess” mortality during the epidemic. Aside from the difficulty in even defining what is excess mortality, trying to figure out what factors may cause geographic variation is difficult, as there are many confounders. Some ideological researchers tried to blame areas with high death rates on Republicans. A new study looks at a lot of variables and concludes that higher education levels and higher income were most strongly correlated with lower excess mortality. This makes some sense, as people in these groups, which tend to be correlated, also generally are in better health, make better health and health care decisions, and have access to more and better health resources. There is no evidence to support the notion that anyone’s political leanings have anything to do with mortality, excess or otherwise. (SSRN Study)
death rates with very little correlation to political affiliation seems correct – contrary to the numerous studies showing otherwise.
I ran a computation of the cumulative death rates by state as of Nov 2021 for the 65 plus age group ( the only age group that really mattered) .
Every state’s death rate for the 65 + age group was in a very narrow range from a low of 1,120 per 100k to 1185 per 100k with no correlation between red states and blue states. I ran the same computation for several urban counties (very blue cities) which also fell in that same range. The exceptions were NY and NJ which were in the 1300 deaths per 100k and vermont, oregon washington and hawaii which were in the 700-800 range.
Those studies showing higher death rates in the “red ” states simply played games with the weighting by age groups.