[sarchertech]

Conservative people are much more likely to live in rural areas. Liberals in more urban areas. Viruses spread much more effectively in higher population densities.

So you'd really need to look at per capita infection rates and control for density, not absolute numbers.

For some anecdata, in my moderate county we have a mask mandate. The surrounding less populated and much more conservative areas don't. Since the mask mandate was put in place more than half of the cases in my county's hospitals have been from the surrounding counties. Despite that fact that they have an order of magnitude fewer people, and despite that fact that we have far more people living in poverty in absolute terms than they do.