Why Blue Places Have Been Hit Harder Economically Than Red Ones

The correlation between a metropolitan area’s employment change between February and September and the metropolitan area’s 2016 presidential vote margin for Trump is 0.53 (where 1 represents a perfect relationship and 0 represents no relationship).

In other words, redder places had milder job losses, and the relationship is strong. But when adjusted for the local occupational and industry mix, that correlation drops to 0.22.

Other factors that are correlated with partisanship are also systematically related to job losses during the pandemic. Employment has fallen more in larger metros and metros with a higher cost of living — perhaps as people move away from cities, possibly to more affordable places, or as businesses struggle where rents and local wages are higher. Add in metropolitan population and cost of living alongside job mix to the analysis, and the correlation between employment change and vote margin falls further to 0.17.

So that means more than two-thirds of the partisan gap can be explained by local job mix, size of the population, and cost of living. These factors explain most of the partisan gap in other economic measures, too, like the rise in unemployment and the drop in job postings on Indeed.

The relatively small partisan gap in economic outcomes that remains could be a result of differences in restrictions or in individual behaviors. Throughout the pandemic, there have been clear partisan differences in concern about outbreaks, mask wearing and social distancing. Research suggests that individual choices contributed more than lockdown policies to declines in economic activity, and places that imposed few restrictions still lost jobs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/upshot/red-blue-economic-recovery.html