Geographical analysis of political epidemiology: Spatial quantification of simultaneity between politics and pandemics

Abstract

Using the sequence of events in 2020, we study simultaneity between political behavior and pandemics. Capitalizing on spatial quantification to untangle simultaneity between politics and pandemics with county as the basic territorial unit, we examine the politics-on-pandemic impact from the outbreak to Election Day. The relations seem more directional than bidirectional and limited in time. Bigdata for 250 M US citizens and tens of thousands of county-days indicate an initial partisan effect on the R reproduction coefficient via a range of mobility types, which disappeared after the outbreak. Then, we quantify the opposite pandemic-on-politics pattern in the form of COVID-19's effect on the 2020 elections, with data for 150 M voters. Our spatial analyses offer scant support for simultaneity in the relations between political behavior and COVID-19. If there is an effect of pandemics on politics, it is often insignificant and never of meaningful magnitude.