Mortality Rate in Trump-Voting US States 19.2% Higher Than Harris States
"Life expectancy in the United States continues to trail comparable countries despite significantly higher health spending." Analyzing data through 2024, they found that in 2024, the age-adjusted mortality rate in states that voted for Donald Trump was 19.2 percent higher than in states that voted for Kamala Harris.
A divide that has grown since 2001
This partisan split in mortality rates is a relatively new phenomenon. “In 2001, age-adjusted death rates in counties where a majority voted for a Republican presidential candidate were only two percent higher than in counties where a majority voted for a Democratic candidate,” according to the analysis.
By 2019, this relative difference had grown to 16.1 percent. When Donald Trump first won the presidency in 2016, the overall mortality gap between states he carried and those with a majority for Kamala Harris stood at 17 percent; by 2024 it reached 19.2 percent.
The largest factor was the differing pace of mortality decline: between 2001 and 2019, rates fell by 11.1 percent in Republican-majority counties but by 21.9 percent in Democratic-majority regions.
Covid-19 and chronic disease as drivers
Covid-19 played an important role. “Covid-19 mortality peaked in 2020 in U.S. states that voted for Harris at 86 cases per 100,000 residents, while in states that voted for Trump it rose to 122 deaths per 100,000 by 2021,” the experts noted.
Yet even without the pandemic, large gaps remained. Cancer mortality fell by 12.9 percent in states that voted for Kamala Harris, but only by 9.1 percent in Trump states. “The persistence of these differences even after the pandemic suggests that chronic diseases, and not Covid-19 alone, are a significant factor in the partisan mortality divide”, the researchers concluded.
Disparities in healthcare access
By 2024, ten U.S. states had not implemented the expansion of the state Medicaid health insurance program. Rural regions and communities that traditionally vote Republican were particularly disadvantaged, facing a disproportionate number of hospital closures and a thinning of healthcare offerings.
The opioid exception
Only in the opioid crisis did the pattern reverse: overdose death rates declined more slowly in Democratic-dominated states, which also had slightly higher drug death rates overall.
“As the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA) agenda continues to shape U.S. health policy, the causes of these differences deserve special attention,” the specialists wrote.