# Does COVID Negatively Impact the Republican Party? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 20, 2021, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374 "2021-12-20T18:13:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/21 "2021-12-21T16:03:30Z")
Pandemics do affect everyone, but the people dying today are the folks who don’t trust the government and see a massive conspiracy to implant chips. People who refuse to get vaccinated for truly religious reasons, although I don’t remember the Bible saying anything specifically about taking or not taking a vaccine, are one thing, but social media has whipped up so many people into a frenzy about the “risks” of taking a vaccine they choose to do nothing. Those people will almost inevitably get sick. Perhaps they won’t die, but many of them will, and most of them voted Republican. I don’t see most of them suddenly deciding to change parties or not vote because they got COVID. They’re far too stubborn to admit that one party had it right while the other party for the most part didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/22 "2021-12-21T16:08:33Z")
Thanks, Chronos. I didn’t think about the magnitude of total US voters versus dead Republicans from COVID. It won’t make much of a difference even if everyone who died was a Republican. Not enough Republicans have died yet. As far as changing people’s minds about their party affiliation goes, I think that’s a long shot given all of the other issues that bind people to a particular political party. For example, for some people as long as the Republican Party is anti-abortion they will stick with them no matter what else they say or do. These single-issue voters are extremely loyal to their party, and that’s not going to change. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/23 "2021-12-21T16:12:22Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > Those people will almost inevitably get sick. Perhaps they won’t die, but many of them will, and most of them voted Republican. I don’t see most of them suddenly deciding to change parties or not vote because they got COVID. They’re far too stubborn to admit that one party had it right while the other party for the most part didn’t. Most of them are too stubborn, sure, but if you read the Herman Cain awards subreddit, you’ll see at least a few of them finally realizing they’ve been had. So, even just a few percent of them coming to their senses might affect the vote. Even deciding just to not vote at all hurts the GOP. Switching votes is even better, but not actually necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/24 "2021-12-21T16:15:20Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Now, if you want to make the case that the perception of Covid negative impacts is focused on the Republicans, that might be more meaningful if you can make the case that Independents and on the fence Democrats are more repelled by Republican stances on Covid, but I think it’s mainly a wash. A lot of Americans seem to be fed up with Covid restrictions, so that’s likely to hurt the Dems as much as the Repubs wrt the next election, but that’s just my take on it, and based on my minuscule data set of ‘people I know’. Agree. Perceived failures in government Covid-19 containment policy disproportionately have impact on Democrats on the federal level, so Covid likely is a net plus for the G.O.P., bizarre as that seems. As for “Dems gonna win because Republicans are dropping like flies”, I’ve yet to see good evidence for that outside of deaths of individual dimwits who avoided vaccination and relied on snake oil remedies instead.\* \*on one foam-at-the-mouth, alt-med pushing, so-far-to-the-right-we’re-almost-far-left website, they’re currently luxuriating in the fantasy that Democrats will be dropping like flies due to “death jabs” and that Democrat-run cities are on the verge of descending into chaos because of impending mortality of workers in vital services. Dream on, loonies. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/25 "2021-12-21T16:20:43Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > As far as changing people’s minds about their party affiliation goes, I think that’s a long shot given all of the other issues that bind people to a particular political party. Right, that’s why I pointed out that there are other ways to change voting habits. And clearly some sort of change in voting habits is a thing that happens, as evidenced by the fact that elections don’t always have the same results. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/26 "2021-12-21T16:26:59Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Perceived failures in government Covid-19 containment policy … … due mostly to Republican intransigence … > [@Jackmannii](#): > > … disproportionately have impact on Democrats on the federal level … … because Democrats always get blamed when they don’t fix GOP screw-ups fast enough … > [@Jackmannii](#): > > … so Covid likely is a net plus for the G.O.P., bizarre as that seems. Not bizarre at all. That’s how it always goes. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/27 "2021-12-22T02:56:30Z")
Considering just the numbers, and the idea that enough Republican voters might die to affect the elections: Not likely. Consider: > [@dolphinboy](#): > > With the country so evenly divided, a 5% change in the voters might swing an election to the lib-Dems. With 800,000 COVID deaths, granted that many of them are underaged or non-voters, could there be an impact on close elections? > [@Horatius](#): > > If US deaths per day average about 1000/day, that’s about 300k more dead by election day in November 2022, most of whom will likely be Republicans. > [@XT](#): > > …a country of over 320 million people Even if we just look at voters, 800K out of 158 or so million voters is a very small percentage. > [@Chronos](#): > > 5% would be a huge swing in election outcomes… but there’s no way to get even remotely close to that from covid deaths. Even if 100% of the deaths were Republicans, there just aren’t that many dead. It’s nowhere near even 5%. Trump got about 74,200,000 votes. Suppose there are 1,100,000 dead of Covid by next November, and suppose ALL of those were Republican voters who aren’t voters anymore. (And suppose those dead don’t vote, mostly.) That’s only a 1.5% loss of Republican votes. Not gonna change any outcomes in the Presidential election. More local elections could be a different story. In very closely divided states or districts, it could change the outcome. I read somewhere (and IIRC I posted it here somewhere) that the number of Covid deaths in Florida already exceed the number by which DeSantis won his election. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/28 "2021-12-22T03:06:11Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > More local elections could be a different story. In very closely divided states or districts, it could change the outcome. I read somewhere (and IIRC I posted it here somewhere) that the number of Covid deaths in Florida already exceed the number by which DeSantis won his election. Yeah, this. Nationally, it won’t make too much difference, but because of the Electoral College, it might make a difference in a few key states. If you look at the numbers for the closest state races in the last few elections, the margin of winning or losing is either less than, or comparable to, the number of COVID deaths. Flip a few states on both the Presidency and the Senate, and everything might change. It’s not a guarantee, but it may very well be a major factor. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/29 "2021-12-22T16:26:43Z")
Agreed. If there are any negative impacts from COVID they are most likely to be seen in close local or state-wide elections. The presidential election, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374/30 "2021-12-22T16:38:38Z")
Definitely. The thing you have to do if you want to see the effect on this level is to look at individual states break out of numbers wrt deaths or even covid infections (if you think the negative impact isn’t going to be from deaths of Republicans, per se, but from the negative impact on the perception of the public wrt Republicans). The problem is that many states just haven’t had all that many deaths, relatively speaking, so the impact on them will be minimal wrt to dead Republicans not being able to vote. The majority of deaths are in states that have very large populations, where the effect is going to be pretty small. The only real impact, as noted, MIGHT be in very local elections which aren’t going to really have much effect. I think even in state elections you just aren’t going to see much of an impact overall, though it’s possible in some specific districts it might have an impact. I think people look at the numbers (800,000!!) and think, wow, that’s a lot. And it is a lot wrt the number of deaths (I think this puts it at the number 2 or 3 killer in the last 2 years, though that’s just my guess). But it’s not a lot of deaths wrt the number of people in the country. As I said, if this had happened in a single state (that isn’t New York, California or Texas) it would be a huge impact to catastrophic depending on the state…but spread over the entire country? It’s not going to really be a blip, by and large, except maybe in some very small districts that might or might not be important. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-covid-negatively-impact-the-republican-party/956374.md?page=1)