Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
In 2016 Election, Communities With Poor Public Health Tended To Shift Vote To Trump
The worse a community鈥檚 health聽the more聽strongly its voters backed Donald Trump in the 2016 election compared to their support for Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, researchers reported on Monday. The findings suggest that public health 鈥渕ight influence鈥 how people vote, said Dr. Jason Wasfy of Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study, which looked at factors such as death rates, diabetes prevalence, and teen pregnancy. 鈥淭he communities that shifted from Romney to Trump in general have worse public health.鈥 (Begley, 10/2)
Everybody聽has a theory about how Donald Trump defied the polls and won the U.S. presidential election. The latest: health. There is a聽鈥渟ubstantial association鈥澛燽etween measures of poor public health and shifts toward聽Trump in last November鈥檚 balloting,聽from voting patterns in聽the 2012 election,聽according to a聽paper from聽researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology鈥檚 Department of Political Science,聽published Monday in the journal PLOS ONE. (Shanker, 10/2)