Story at a glance:
- The Los Angeles Times examines counties with populations of at least 20,000.
- A lot of the red-leaning states have remarkably low vaccination rates that only Republican leaders can influence.
- Democratic mayors in rural areas are urging people to get vaccinated.
Using data provided by counties, the Los Angeles Times examined counties with populations of at least 20,000 for every state except Hawaii, which does not have county level data available, to determine which counties have the lowest rates of vaccination.
Upon reviewing the chart compiled by the Times, Barnstable County, Mass., a population of 212,909 that mostly voted for President Biden, stands out, with only 4.5 percent of its residents fully vaccinated. Those numbers come from the CDC’s data tracker, although other sources have put Barnstable County’s vaccination rate at much higher, leading some to question if there are errors in the data.
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Following as the second-least-vaccinated county, Dodge County, Ga., with a population of about 20,605 that mostly voted for former President Trump, has 5 percent of its residents fully vaccinated.
The third-least-vaccinated county is Upshur County, W.Va., with a population of 24,175 that largely favors Trump and a vaccination rate of 7.8 percent, the Times reported.
In fact, a lot of the red-leaning states have remarkably low vaccination rates, and it is largely up to Republican leaders to influence their constituents to get vaccinated.
It is worth noting that Trump was vaccinated in January.
In rural Democratic states, it is also difficult to encourage people to get vaccinated, as is the case in Lovington, N.M.
“It’s a hard sell here,” David Trujillo, the Democratic mayor of Lovington, said. Lovington is the county seat of rural Lea County, where the former president won by 60 percentage points.
Trujillo, one of the first locals to be vaccinated in midwinter, has been fighting with his people to get vaccinated. The rate there is about 20 percent, which is about a third of the rate statewide.
Update: This story was updated on Aug. 12, 2021 to include discussion of Barnstable County’s case numbers.
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