Partisanship, Trumpism, and Health Behavior in the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Enduring Effects of COVID-19: A Global Perspective (Virtual Session)

Abstract

A wide range of empirical scholarship has documented a partisan gap in health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, but the political foundations and temporal dynamics of these partisan gaps remain poorly understood. Using an original six-wave individual panel study of Americans throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that at the individual level, partisan differences in health behavior grew rapidly in the early months of the pandemic, and are explained almost entirely by individual support for or opposition to President Trump. Our results comprise powerful evidence that Trumpism, rather than ideology or simple partisan identity, explains partisan gaps in health behavior in the United States.

Authors

• Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University

• Shana Kushner Gadarian, Syracuse University

• Sara Wallace Goodman, University of California, Irvine