We look at the COVID-19 confirmed cases for US counties compared to various demographics, vaccinations and Presidential election results.

Vaccinations

Vaccination data per county are from:  https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccinations-in-the-United-States-County/8xkx-amqh/data

Confirmed cases per county data are from: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/. Note that Hawaii, Texas and Alaska data is missing.

Presidential election results are from: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tonmcg/US_County_Level_Election_Results_08-20/master/2020_US_County_Level_Presidential_Results.csv

Fig 1

Fig 2

In Fig 1 it is seen that counties that voted for Biden have a  higher vaccination rate. The average full vaccinations for Beiden are 44% +- 16% versus 36% +- 13% for Trump.

The trendline in Fig 2 shows a negative slope indicating the more the county leans to Trump the less likely people are to be vaccinated.

Looking in more detail at the Trump and Biden election return distributions we see below:

It is seen in Fig 3 that there are over four times more counties won by Trump compared to counties won by Biden. This can also be observed in Fig 4 by looking at a map of results by county from https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/. However, as one includes the county populations in Fig 5 by means of a bubble plot one can see the impact leans more to Biden.

Frequency histograms of % of the population fully vaccinated for counties won by Biden and % of the population fully vaccinated for counties won by Trump are shown in Fig 6. 

  • Comparing the y scales it is again apparent that many more counties lean to Trump.
  • The peak for Biden is between 51% and 56% vaccinated whereas for Trump it is between 31% and 36%.
  • As measured by the full width at half max the Biden peak is much wider (Biden 31-36% - 66-71%, Trump 26-31% - 41-46%).
  • There are a surprisingly large number of counties with % fully vaccinated below 16% (Biden ~40, Trump ~140)
    • This corresponds to  ~ 2.4 million people from Biden counties and 4.1 million from Trump counties.
    • For Biden the bulk of these counties are in Virginia (71%), followed by  Georgia (25%) and Massachusetts (5%)
    • For Trump the bulk of the counties are in Georgia (55%), Virginia (39%), and West Virginia (19%), followed by Colorado (2.5%), Nevada (2.5%), North Dakota (2.5%), Arizona (0.6%) and  Louisianal (0.6%). 
    • For Biden these counties contain ~2.4 million people, for Trump they contain ~ 11.7 million people 

Fig 6

Various Demographics

Here we look at the correlations between various demographics etc.

Presidential election 2020

Another way of observing how Biden was more popular in the more densely populated counties is seen in Fig 7 where we plot the point difference against the population density and see that the Pearson R2 correlation (a measure of the total variation of y explained by the predictor (regressor) x) is ~28%, and the Pearson r (the correlation between x and y) = sqrt(R2) ~ 53%.

Fig 7

US COVID-19 Cumulative cases from 1/1/2021 thru vs demographics

Below we see the US by county COVID-19 cumulative cases from 1/1/2021 thru 7/29/2021 cases plotted against 8 demographics. It is seen that there is very little correlation against any of the demographics. The table below summarizes the R2, r and a and b in the trendline y = a.x + b

MetricR squaredra.xb
per capita income0.00740.086-2E-05x4.45
% white non hispanic0.01120.1060.008x4.5
% unemployed0.00670.0820.086x3.57
% poverty0.00950.0970.26x3.54
% finish college0.00490.070-0.65x5.9
% black0.00990.0990.0104x3.82
% unemployed0.00670.0820.086x3.57
population per sq mile0.00420.0656E-05x3.9

Conlusions

  • For the US counties there is very little correlation between COVID-19 confirmed cases and many demographic metrics.
  • The number of counties that voted for Trump exceeds the number who voted for Biden by over a factor of 4.
  • However the Biden counties contain more people.
  • In terms of number of counties vs full vaccination, the peak for Biden is between 51% and 56% culy vaccinated whereas for Trump it is between 31% and 36%.
  • As measured by the full width at half max the Biden peak is much wider (Biden 31-36% - 66-71%, Trump 26-31% - 41-46%).
  • There are a surprisingly large number of counties with % fully vaccinated below 16% (Biden ~40, Trump ~140)
    • This corresponds to  ~ 2.4 million people from Biden counties and 4.1 million from Trump counties.
    • For Biden the bulk of these counties are in Virginia (71%), followed by  Georgia (25%) and Massachusetts (5%)
    • For Trump the bulk of the counties are in Georgia (55%), Virginia (39%), and West Virginia (19%), followed by Colorado (2.5%), Nevada (2.5%), North Dakota (2.5%), Arizona (0.6%) and  Louisianal (0.6%). 
    • For Biden these counties contain ~2.4 million people, for Trump they contain ~ 11.7 million people 
    • A few counties have < 1% of their population fully vaccinated.

Sources

Confirmed cases per county data

https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/. Note that Hawaii, Texas and Alaska data is missing.

Presidential election results

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tonmcg/US_County_Level_Election_Results_08-20/master/2020_US_County_Level_Presidential_Results.csv

Delta variant cases by country 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245971/number-delta-variant-worldwide-by-country/

US electoral results 2020 by county 

https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-population/:

COVID-variants in UK and US

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=latest&country=ALB~AND~AUT~BLR~BEL~BIH~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~ISL~IRL~ITA~OWID_KOS~LVA~LIE~LTU~LUX~MLT~MDA~MCO~MNE~NLD~MKD~NOR~POL~PRT~ROU~RUS~SMR~SRB~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~UKR~GBR~VAT&region=World&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations_per_hundred&pickerSort=desc&Interval=Cumulative&Align+outbreaks=false&Relative+to+Population=true&Metric=Vaccine+doses

Daily confirmed cases per million population by country

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases?country=IND~GBR~CAN~DEU~FRA~USA~ESP~PRT

COVID vaccinations by country

https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccinations-in-the-United-States-County/8xkx-amqh/data

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=latest&country=ALB~AND~AUT~BLR~BEL~BIH~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~ISL~IRL~ITA~OWID_KOS~LVA~LIE~LTU~LUX~MLT~MDA~MCO~MNE~NLD~MKD~NOR~POL~PRT~ROU~RUS~SMR~SRB~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~UKR~GBR~VAT&region=World&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations_per_hundred&pickerSort=desc&Interval=Cumulative&Align+outbreaks=false&Relative+to+Population=true&Metric=Vaccine+doses




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