The authors wrote: Simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives.
The study was published on Plos One, an inclusive journal community working together to advance science for the benefit of society, now and in the future.
The authors are from Syracuse University in New York, Harvard in Massachusetts, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Washington, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Western Ontario, in Canada.
They wrote: Results show that the policy domains were associated with working-age mortality.
Bucking the trend, the study found that more conservative marijuana policies were associated with lower mortality rates.
But it also found that more liberal policies on the environment, gun safety, labour, economic taxes and tobacco taxes in a state were associated with lower mortality in that state.
They added: Especially strong associations were observed between certain domains and specific causes of death: between the gun safety domain and suicide mortality among men, between the labour domain and alcohol-induced mortality, and between both the economic tax and tobacco tax domains and CVD [cardiovascular] mortality.
Takeaways The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.