Population, Politics, and the COVID Vaccine

According to this Bloomberg article, political party affiliation has a strong correlation with vaccination rates across metro areas. In other words, metro areas with higher vaccination rates are more likely to skew Democratic in the polls.

This isn't always the case. There are places like Rosebud County, MT, where 76.2% of the population is fully vaxxed despite the polls going red in the 2020 election. There are also places like Fulton County, GA, where the Democratic vote won majority but 30.5% of the population is fully vaxxed. There are many other counties similar to these. See if you can find some!

This value-by-alpha map shows the percentage of the county population that is fully vaccinated^* using a qualitative color scheme. Red symbolizing smaller percentages of vaccination and green symbolizing larger percentages.

Each county's population class is shown as a function of transparency (alpha) — metro counties being fully opaque, micro counties being halfway transparent, and rural counties being nearly transparent. 2020 Presidential election results appear in the county info panel in the top right of the screen.

Vaccine data as of 11/17/2021

^*The CDC's definition of fully vaccinated is someone who has received the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine