> Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning counties differ in ways other than political party affiliation, such as racial and ethnic composition, rurality, and educational levels, making it difficult to establish whether the differences in COVID-19 death rates are associated with political party affiliation or other differences in county-level characteristics.

So are they hoping people just read the article title, go "heh!", and not think if there's a valid metric or correlation at play?

> Research before the COVID-19 pandemic has also found evidence of higher death rates in Republican-leaning counties than Democratic-leaning counties.

So they found nothing new?