For our analyses, people in the survey are assigned their county’s per-capita 60-day cumulative number of Covid-19 deaths. In this way, we capture variation in county-level deaths within counties because people in the same county are interviewed on different days. Some counties had high Covid-19 death rates in April, while others did not. The goal is to figure out whether the differences in Covid-19 deaths per capita in a county at a given point in time are affecting how people plan to vote in 2020 and how they rate the president. The analyses reveal clear patterns across multiple levels of geography (states and counties) and different offices (president, Senate and House).

Source: New York Times July 28, 2020 09:01 UTC