A new analysis demonstrates the sharp partisan divide in COVID-19 deaths.

“Since vaccines have become widely available, the average risk of dying from Covid-19 is more than 50% higher in states that voted for President Trump in 2020 than it is in states that voted for President Biden,” reports CNN after crunching data from Johns Hopkins University.

1,000 real Americans died *yesterday* of Covid-19. And those deaths are disproportionately coming from red states where huge numbers of unvaccinated citizens are dying because they’re being told dangerous, deadly lies by people like Jim Jordan. https://t.co/DNSAN2p56D

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) December 2, 2021

The outlet continues:

Since Feb. 1, red states have had an average of 116 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people – 52% higher than the average of 77 deaths per 100,000 people in blue states. The five states with the worst per capita death rates in that time all voted for Trump in 2020: Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Low vaccine adoption – and a resistance to mask wearing – is likely to blame for Republicans’ increased risk. Last month, The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that, after controlling for other factors, “a Republican is 26 percentage points more likely than a Democrat to remain unvaccinated.”

“This gap is greater than the gaps between racial and ethnic groups, people with varying education levels, people who are insured and uninsured, different age groups, or people who live in rural versus urban areas,” notes KFF.

"How many more people have to die before we say what we've all known for quite some time this faction of the right is a death cult," @JoyAnnReid says about those who continue to defy Covid measures despite the higher rate of related deaths in red states.https://t.co/Y2uvCAXOYo

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 1, 2021

Prominent GOP leaders, like Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, have consistently undermined vaccination efforts, framing inoculation as a personal choice instead of a public health necessity. And several Republican governors, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’ Greg Abbott, have resisted mask mandates.

Writing in The Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump asserts:

We can’t say that politics are the sole reason that vaccination rates are lower or that low vaccination rates are the sole reason those parts of the country were harder hit. We can say, though, that individual choices not to get vaccinated or to get a booster will disproportionately harm those individuals — and that most of those people at this point are Republicans.