How Divided Are We? Educational Attainment and COVID Worry within Political Parties

The COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous uncertainty into individuals’ lives. As the pandemic progressed in the United States, the partisan divide in attitudes toward COVID-19 dominated headlines, driven in part by the dismissive attitude toward the pandemic by some leaders. We explore differences in self-reported worry about COVID-19 as case levels fluctuate within states. We find that overall, Democrats are most worried about COVID-19 and react most to changes in case levels with more worry, followed by Independents, followed by Republicans. Across parties, the most educated group (college and above) react to more cases with more worry. However, among Republicans and Independents, lower education groups do not. Results using state-level death reports mimic the patterns of the case level results, though the coefficients are much larger. While the party divide is undeniable, education plays a key moderating role.