Politics, above COVID-19 cases or deaths, determined whether states enacted mask mandates during the first months of the pandemic, a new study finds.

States with Republican governors delayed imposing indoor mask requirements by an average of nearly 30 days, controlling for other factors. The study by researchers at the 91̽�� examined a series of factors surrounding the announcement (or lack thereof) of statewide mask mandates in all 50 states, and found that partisanship, particularly at the state executive level, where such restrictions can be imposed, was the most significant factor in the timing of new rules.

The is posted to the preprint server medRxiv and has not been peer-reviewed.

“Wearing masks in public places is one of the easiest ways to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, and clear, consistent mandates are one of the best tools we have to get everyone to wear masks regularly. Our team has been tracking mask mandates covering indoor public spaces, where the risk of transmission is highest, and we wanted to know whether adoption was really as partisan as it seemed, or if there were other explanations,” said , an associate professor of political science at the 91̽��and lead author of the study. The research is part of the 91̽��COVID-19 State Policy Project, led by Adolph and , political science professor and chair of the department.

Evidence for the effectiveness of mask-wearing in combatting COVID-19 has grown , and scientists in the United States and around the world agree that the virus, commonly spread through the air, can be curtailed . Leaders of some countries have imposed , but such decisions in the United States are currently left to the states.

That’s where politics appears to enter the fray.

Adolph and his team, who earlier this year released a study on the role of politics in imposing statewide social distancing measures, examined statewide mask requirements adopted from early April through mid-August 2020. The researchers grouped mask laws by the breadth of mandates and focused on those that, at minimum, required a mask in all indoor public spaces. States requiring masks indoors and outdoors are considered most restrictive; 25 states now have that requirement.

Currently, 14 states do not have any statewide mask mandate; three states have a limited requirement for masks in some settings.

The team then analyzed the timing of those laws taking into account other state data, such as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, the average partisan ideology of its population, and the governor’s political party (which often, but doesn’t always, match the dominant party affiliation of citizens).

The study found that, after accounting for other factors, states with Democratic governors were seven times as likely as those with Republican governors to impose broad statewide mask mandates. Described another way, if two states were identical except for the party of the governor, the researchers would expect the Republican-governed state to adopt a mask mandate 29.9 days later than its Democrat-led twin.

Adolph argues it’s at least somewhat surprising that Republican governors resisted mask mandates. After all, he points out, requiring masks could help stave off the costly reimposition of social distancing mandates. “President Trump spent crucial months deriding masks and refusing to wear them in public,” Adolph said. “This deepened a partisan divide that few Republican governors have been willing to cross, even as their states’ cases shot up this summer.”

The severity of the pandemic mattered less than governors’ party affiliation, researchers noted. ��The epidemiological indicator that had the largest impact on mask mandates is the rate of COVID-19 deaths, which lags several weeks behind current conditions. Controlling for other factors, states with higher daily death rates were an average of 10.5 days quicker to adopt mask mandates than those with lower rates. But mask mandates did not appear to respond to real-time metrics like new cases per million or the rates of people testing positive, the study points out.

The team analyzed other demographic factors, such as the resident’s education levels, or the percentage of the population over age 70, but those didn’t have any noticeable effect, according to the study.

The paper has been submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The study was funded by the at the 91̽��and the Benificus Foundation.

In addition to Wilkerson, co-authors were , a doctoral student in health metrics sciences at the UW; and political science doctoral students , , and .

For more information, contact Adolph at cadolph@uw.edu.

States led by Republican governors and with a significant share of Trump supporters were an average of nearly three days later than other states to enact social distancing measures related to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a new study.

The finding is part of new research by the 91̽�� examining factors that contributed to decision-making by governors in all 50 states to combat the novel coronavirus. The explores whether the adoption of state-level social distancing measures depends on the number of coronavirus cases in the state, the affluence of the state, and the partisanship of the state’s governor and voters.

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, which as of March 31 has killed more than 3,000 people in the United States and, by many estimates, is projected to cause anywhere from to ��domestically, has prompted public health officials to push social distancing as the key, proactive way of limiting the rise of infection. The World Health Organization more than 750,000 confirmed cases worldwide, and more than 36,000 deaths.

But the response to and attitude toward the virus have been mixed among political leaders. For several weeks at the beginning of the outbreak, President Trump and some right-leaning media outlets .

In the month since the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed – in Washington state – most states have enacted some social distancing restrictions, such as closing schools and businesses, limiting or banning gatherings of people, and advising or ordering residents to shelter in place. Mandates to stay at home are now in effect in 28 states.

The varying restrictions, and the timing of those restrictions, prompted 91̽��researchers to take a closer look.

“We wanted to understand why some American states have been slow to introduce social distancing measures,” said lead author , an associate professor of political science at the UW. “You might expect states to delay if they have fewer confirmed cases — though even that would arguably be a mistake — but we were worried by the appearance of a partisan pattern in responses, both at the state level and in public opinion.”

Update Nov. 19:��The paper was originally posted on the preprint server��but has now been peer reviewed and published in the .��This release has been edited to reflect that change.

Adolph and his team analyzed the measures that states enacted with other data, such as the number of COVID-19 cases in each state, how neighboring states were responding, each governor’s political party and each state’s voter turnout for Trump in 2016.

The team found that partisanship – especially when a state has a Republican governor, as well as the share of the statewide vote for Trump — led to delays in enacting social distancing. That��“combined partisan effect” coincided with a delay of 2.7 days, the team found.��Partisanship had a greater effect than other variables, including the number of confirmed cases in each state, researchers said. The number of confirmed cases, for example, influenced state action by less than half a day.

“ now document that Republican voters in March showed less concern on average about the coronavirus, and were less likely to adopt prudent behavior to reduce their risk of becoming infected,” Adolph said. “If Republican leaders were also systematically slower to act, their reluctance would end up hurting all Americans, but especially their own constituents.”

Under normal political circumstances, governors often make decisions to appease their party and voters, Adolph said. The 91̽��research team wanted to explore how governors adapted to what was essentially an unprecedented threat that emerged at once, nationwide.

The paper is not trying to assign blame, Adolph added. Enacting social distancing measures is difficult for any elected official, because closing schools and businesses has significant economic and personal consequences for a population. But based on public health guidance, until a vaccine is available for widespread use, aggressive social distancing can stem the exponential spread of disease and limit the total number of deaths.

“Fighting COVID-19 shouldn’t be a partisan issue: The virus doesn’t care what party you belong to, and everyone is at risk. There’s still a chance to change this and save lives,” Adolph said.��“The sooner all governors mandate and enforce strict social distancing, and the more they listen to public health experts instead of partisan cues, the more lives we will save, and the sooner we can all recover from this crisis.��Every day matters.”

The paper has been submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Co-authors are , professor and chair of the political science department at the UW; , a doctoral student in the 91̽��Department of Health Metrics Sciences; and political science doctoral students and .

For more information, contact Adolph at cadolph@uw.edu.

A aims to address this need. Legislative Explorer, or LegEx, developed by 91̽�� political science professor and undergraduate Rohnin Randles, in partnership with Seattle-based Schema Design, draws on bill information made available by the state to enable students, journalists and voters to visually explore the lawmaking process.

“For most Washingtonians, lawmaking is a mysterious black box. LegEx gives everyone a chance to see what’s actually going on in Olympia,” Wilkerson said. “And we think it will surprise people.”

The Legislature’s current provides lots of information, and users can search for bill information by bill number, sponsor and title. Legislative Explorer, Wilkerson said, supplements what the state provides by allowing users to find and view much of the same information visually and dynamically.

Wilkerson created a similar data tool for the U.S. Congress with support from the National Science Foundation. That tool visualizes the progress of more than 250,000 congressional bills and resolutions introduced from 1973 through 2016.

Wilkerson said he’s always wanted to create a similar tool for Washington state because part-time state legislatures are so different from Congress. LegEx, kicked off in the summer of 2019 with funding from a CoMotion Amazon Catalyst grant and the Donald R. Matthews Endowment for Excellence in Political Science.

The new Legislative Explorer is similar to the original tool for Congress, but with a fresher design, more capabilities and the ability to search both the Congressional and state data from the same home page. Among its features:

• A visual animation of lawmaking for every legislature dating back to 2001 (more than 50,000 bills and resolutions)
• Nightly updating of bill activity for the current legislature
• At the top of the screen lawmakers and “the people” introduce bills, which then bounce through the Legislature’s many institutions, to the governor’s desk and then into law at the bottom of the screen. Of course, the vast majority of bills get “stuck” at some point in this process, never making it into law
• Color-coding differentiates the parties of lawmakers and their bills: red particles indicate bills sponsored by Republicans, blue particles are bills sponsored by Democrats
• Tracers highlight the complete path of each bill
• Numerous filters (sponsor, party, majority versus minority, legislative district, policy topic, Eastern versus Western Washington) and title keyword search capabilities
• Easy access to additional information about every bill and resolution

To see how Legislative Explorer works, take a bill from the 2019 session, House Bill 1532, which proposed establishing resources to help people deal with brain injuries resulting from domestic abuse. By typing the bill number — or even the word “brain” in the search window — a user can watch the chronology of the bill unfold on the time lapse. The bill starts in the Public Safety Committee and works its way through two more committees before passing the House in March. It then gets sent to the Senate’s Law & Justice Committee, where it spends another month before landing on the Senate floor. It passes and is sent to the governor for signing.

Legislative Explorer can help constituents get a direct look at what their representatives are doing in Olympia, student collaborator Randles said.

“People have so many questions about our government, but it’s often hard to get the right answers. I think what we’ve done with this project is bridge that gap by creating a resource that allows anyone to ask questions and get answers about what is really going on in their government,” said Randles, a 91̽��senior and political science major. “You might say, ‘I voted for this person because I thought they were going to address topic X, but in the last two years, did they do anything?’ Maybe they did nothing — maybe they introduced 10 bills and all of them died, but at least they tried.”

Randles said the visualization is especially effective at illustrating the difficulty of lawmaking. In any given term, only about 12% of the approximately 5,000 bills introduced will be signed by the governor and become law.

The site taps into data from , the Washington State Legislature’s Legislative Service Center. Each night, a new batch of data is pulled and used to update the database running the visualization, to keep the site as current as possible.

“LegEx doesn’t capture everything the Legislature does, such as meeting with constituents, amending bills in committee, or voting on the floor,” said Wilkerson. “But we do hope that Washingtonians of all ages find Legislative Explorer to be an engaging and informative — even fun — way to explore the activities of their legislature.”

For more information, contact Wilkerson at jwilker@uw.edu.

Think of it as big data meeting up with How a Bill Becomes a Law.

“The goal was to get beyond the ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ narrative and let users discover the lawmaking process for themselves,” said Wilkerson, 91̽��professor of political science and director of the . The free tool is available at .

The data set is huge indeed: The Legislative Explorer tracks the progress of every bill and resolution introduced in Congress since 1973 — 250,000 in all. It notes each time a bill or resolution advances from one stage of the process to the next, in or out of committee or moves to the floor for consideration, totaling about 750,000 such movements.

http://vimeo.com/91846611

Users can drill down through the graphically presented data in lots of ways, including by type of legislation, sponsors, party or chamber of origin. The tool also has filters allowing users to sort results many ways, including by gender of sponsoring legislator, committee affiliation and — perhaps most helpful of all — whether the legislation is considered major or minor.

“The basic idea was to apply the data-driven discovery methods used increasingly in the natural sciences to bring big data to the lawmaking process,” Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson and collaborators suggest students or researchers might start by observing how many bills are introduced in each Congress and how many die along the way or are sent to the president and become law. They also suggest researchers should keep certain caveats in mind, including the reminder that bills vary in importance and get substantially changed or combined with others. The 906-page Affordable Care Act, Wilkerson noted, started out as a six-page bill on service members’ home ownership.

Wilkerson collaborated with , a 91̽��doctoral student in political science, who organized the data underlying the online tool. The two also hired , a Seattle-based creative design and technology studio, to create and maintain the site.

Wilkerson said those using the online tool may find Congress a good deal busier than they expected. “There’s still a lot happening in Congress, but more of it these days is getting stuck at the stage where the House and Senate have to reconcile their differences.”

Future improvements, Wilkerson said, may include tracking the impact of legislation that becomes law. For example, “What happens when Congress passes a law? How does it impact the existing authorities of the federal government and the regulatory activities of federal agencies?”

The project was funded in part by revenue from , which provides tools for legislative simulation courses, and by the National Science Foundation.

Wilkerson said the tool seeks to enable citizens to become better informed about the complex legislative process, beyond simplistic descriptions and media coverage centering mostly on Congressional controversies.

“It doesn’t address everything the people might want to know, but we think the Legislative Explorer will advance public interest and understanding of ‘their’ Legislature,” he said.

“But don’t worry,” Wilkerson added. “It’s not the end of ‘Schoolhouse Rock.'”

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Find the Legislative Explorer online at . For more information, contact Wilkerson at 206-543-8030 or jwilker@uw.edu. (NSF grant number is SES-1243917.)