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- There's a Red/Blue divide in how states are handling the pandemic, The Washington Post reported.
- Of the 23 states with a total of new COVID-19 cases per capita surpassing the national rate, 21 voted for Trump.
- 14 of the 18 states with new death totals higher than the national ratio backed the former president in 2020.
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There's a significant political divide in how US states are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and red states are faring much worse, according to The Washington Post.
States that backed former President Donald Trump in the most recent presidential election have higher rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths than those that voted for President Joe Biden, The Post said.
Of the 23 states that have a total of new COVID-19 cases per capita that surpasses the national ratio, the media outlet reported that 21 voted for Trump in November. Hawaii and Georgia are the only Biden-voting states to have more cases per capita than the country's average.
A similar statistic applies when it comes to the number of COVID-19 deaths. Of the 18 states that have new death totals higher than the national ratio, the data shows that 14 voted for the former president.
When it comes to the 17 least-vaccinated states, 16 – all but Georgia – voted for Trump, the report said.
The chain of correlation makes it "much harder to assert that politics is not playing a role," wrote The Washington Post's national correspondent Philip Bump.
"Republicans have been less concerned about the virus, less likely to embrace practices such as masking, more likely to express opposition to vaccination and (obviously) voted more heavily for Trump," Bump said. "States that are seeing the most new cases and deaths are states that are less heavily vaccinated and were more supportive of Trump last year."
According to KFF's COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, 20 percent of Republicans say they will "definitely not" get vaccinated. That compares to only 5 percent of Democrats who are opposed to getting a shot, the ongoing research project says.
In July, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told ABC that America has to "get away from the divisiveness" - a reference to the US's Red/Blue vaccination divide.
Viruses, Fauci said, "don't know the difference between a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent."