Moderator Action
The topic of this thread is a bit QZ and a bit P&E. Since the factual/statistics portion of the topic seems to be pretty well played out and we’re focusing more on the P&E side of things, let’s move this from QZ over to P&E.
Phrased like that it sounds like the statements are in conflict but I don’t think they are.
Trump occasionally speaks his mind (which includes incriminating himself). It’s pretty obvious that vaccination makes sense at this point, and easier for trump to recognize this now he’s out of office (so not trying to sweep a problem under the rug).
So he tepidly stated his opinion that people should get vaccinated followed by various disclaimers and limitations when he heard the crowd booing.
Later Biden and others decided that praising trump might get more trumpists vaccinated. The strategy seemed to work with trump who defended vaccination far more forcefully than before.
But they overestimated the significance of trump at this point. He’s still probably the most influential person, but he’s not the leader.
The viral stupidity depends more on vectors like fox news now.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
The tweet has been deleted now, but I’m not sure he needs to correct for other factors if he wasn’t directly claiming that being Republican is the sole causal factor. If COVID killed more people west of the Mississippi, you wouldn’t necessarily have to say “also there are more old people there.”
I did a back of the napkin calculation on that and I came to the (weak) conclusion that the differences in COVID deaths won’t be significant except maybe in extremely tight races.
Do this. Take the number of COVID deaths in your state. Assume 60% of them would have voted GQP. Now compare the 20% difference in deaths to the margins of victory in your state. In most cases the margins will be well over the differences in deaths.
To get to that (very rough) estimate of 60-40, I assumed that the early death rates through the first year, were closer to 50-50 and current rates are 70-30.
With 1.1 million US deaths, that 20% difference is only 220K, which nationwide is nothing compared to Biden’s 7 million vote margin and is often smaller than some big state margins for US Senate elections. (Schumer is currently ahead by over 700K, for example) .
Even if the actual split was 70-30, that’s still only 440K votes.
You also need to factor in that about half of the people don’t vote, so it’s going to have even less of an impact than you state.
Never mind, wrong thread.
Well, unless you’re Lauren Bobert in which case it’s entirely plausible that her actions alone have killed off enough of her constituents to have lost her reelection.