As Covid Has Become a Red-State Problem, Too, Have Attitudes Changed?

With the coronavirus spreading into red America, policymakers there have been forced to change course.

Some reopening plans have been scuttled; Republican leaders in Washington have broken ranks with President Trump on response policy; and the president himself eventually declared that Americans should wear protective masks.

At the grass-roots level, however, it’s not clear if the partisan differences in how people view the pandemic have changed much at all.

There is some evidence of a narrowing on some fronts, but other survey data suggests that Americans disagree about the severity of the crisis as much today as they did two months ago, when people in Democratic counties were taking the brunt of the damage.