Spared early on, 'Trump country' now leads in coronavirus cases, deaths

It remained so for weeks, and that fact defined what became battle lines between mask wearers and skeptics, and between those convinced restrictions on commerce were needed to save lives versus those who wanted less government intervention.

Now, though, it is squarely a “Trump country” issue.

Trump trails in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, partly on the basis of his handling of a pandemic that saw him feuding with state governors, questioning government scientists, and hesitant to frame a national response to a crisis that easily spread across state lines. He refused to change course even after catching the disease himself and requiring hospitalization.

For a while in the spring it looked like the hands-off approach might work. The daily growth in new cases declined in the hard-hit Northeast corridor, while remaining level in the Trump states of the South and Midwest.

But when summer arrived, and places started lifting restrictions, that brief moment of control also ended. So did the virus’s focus in blue state America. By midsummer outbreaks spread in the South before moving this fall into the heart of Trump’s base in the industrial Midwest.

The gap in case growth narrows somewhat when adjusting for population by looking at numbers of new infections for each million people.

Nonetheless, the newest surge in the outbreak remains most intense in “Trump country.”