2020-05-16

Canada breaks the red/blue divide

Matt Margolis talks about the red state/blue state divide on re-opening after the Wuhan Flu lockdown:

There’s plenty of reason to believe that that politics is the driving factor. After all, it has been observed in polls that political affiliation has an impact on coronavirus polling on concern about the virus, attitudes towards social distancing, reopening the country, etc.

But we hear so much about the red state-blue state divide that one can’t help wondering how the coronavirus has impacted each state. So, let’s take a look. Based on data from the New York Times collected May 14 at 3:00 p.m. ET, of the ten worst states in terms of coronavirus cases per capita, all but one (Louisiana) voted for Hillary in 2016.
When it comes to death per capita, blue states are overwhelmingly the hardest hit. Of the top 25 states with the worst deaths per capita, only nine were states that voted for Trump. Why are blue states getting harder hit than red states? It’s not politics, it’s population density.
The moment you try to apply Margolis' theory outside of the USA though it falls apart (Note: I have had to adopt my own Phase description for semi-obvious reasons, they will not line up with provincial announcements).



I have colour coded the provinces based on right-vs-left governments (using the Canadian convention of blue/pink rather than the American one). Queerbec of course gets it's own colour. Distinct society yadda yadda yadda, though with the Wuhan Flu that's very appropriate because you may notice they have five times more active cases than the ROC. They also have the weirdest plan, opening schools before garden centres but also have a different policy for Montreal than the rest of the province. There is no political divide in Canada though: the oil-hating separatists opened daycares and schools far ahead of anybody else but closed private enterprise, but B.C.'s oil haters were the fastest reopeners in the country until Alberta overtook them May 14th.

Bonus Manitoba shutdown coverage: Northerntruthseeker is really really really upset about social distancing. And facemasks. And Jews.