Political partisanship, laissez-faire attitudes, and COVID-19 behaviours and viewpoints in Canada and the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

In the United States, clear partisan differences in responses to COVID-19 have been shown in leadership and elite cueing at the state level as well as in perspectives and behaviours of the citizenry. This study probes differences in political values-particularly the prevalence of laissez-faire attitudes-that might explain the stronger social consensus on pandemic countermeasures seen in Canada.

Methods

Data were obtained from temporally aligned waves of cross-sectional surveys of Canadian and US adults in the first year of the pandemic. Survey questions were used to construct an index of laissez-faire attitudes (LFA) which, along with demographic variables and measures of partisanship, was incorporated into regression models to predict three outcomes: practice of p

SUBMITTER: Krashinsky L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10868568 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature