Almost twice as many Republicans than Democrats died of Covid, study says

[DBoon]

5. link to the original paper

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30512/w30512.pdf

Here is the abstract:

Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that
Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning
counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This
study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during
the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality
data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered
Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference
concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the
excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess
death rate for Democrats. 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.