Community health may have contributed to results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a study conducted by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Political Science, both based in Boston. The researchers published the study in PLOS ONE.
The research team gathered county-by-county election data for the 2012 and 2016 elections, and combined it with information from a public health database compiled by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, including data collected by the CDC. They gathered complete data covering both elections for 3,009 counties.
They included the following health measures in their analysis:
● Reported days of poor health
● Prevalence of food insecurity
● Obesity and diabetes
● Teen birth rates
● Age-adjusted mortality rate
Here are 5 study insights:
1. Across all counties there was an average 5.4 percent shift in the percentage of voters in a county voting for Donald Trump in 2016 and the percentage voting for Mitt Romney in 2012.
2. Eighty-eight percent of counties shifted towards Trump while 12 percent shifted away from Trump.
3. Counties that shifted towards Trump had higher proportions of white populations, more rural populations and lower average household incomes compared to those that shifted away.
4. Additionally, counties shifting towards Trump had higher teen birth rates and age-adjusted mortality.
5. Counties shifting towards Trump tended to have fewer health resources, including half the number primary care physicians per capita compared to counties shifting away.
"Even after adjusting for factors such as race, income and education, public health seems to have an additional, independent association with this voting shift towards Trump," said Jason H. Wasfy, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital's cardiology division, who led the study.