States with Republican governors led the way in overall handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study found.
Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana, South Dakota, and Florida — all states with GOP chief executives — received the highest scores, respectively, The Committee To Unleash Prosperity (CUP) said.
New York, California, New Jersey, and Illinois — Democrat-led states — were among the worst in dealing with the coronavirus, performing "poorly on every measure," the CUP report said.
Thirteen Republican-led states were among the top 15 in the study, which compared state performance on such metrics as the economy, education, and mortality from the virus, and examined how states and their respective governments handled the pandemic response.
"Shutting down their economies and schools was by far the biggest mistake governors and state officials made during COVID, particularly in blue states," Stephen Moore, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, told Fox News Digital.
"We hope the results of this study will persuade governors not to close schools and businesses the next time we have a new virus variant."
Govs. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., and J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., as well as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., directed states that "had high age-adjusted death rates; they had high unemployment and significant GDP losses, and they kept their schools shut down much longer than almost all other states," the CUP report found.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., replaced Cuomo in August after he resigned in disgrace due to sexual harassment allegations.
Montana, fourth in the study, had a Democrat governor until the 2020 election.
The CUP study also found no correlation between states that enacted stringent travel, vocation, and dining restrictions with lower death totals, Fox News reported.
"The study verifies other studies which have found that locking down businesses, stores, churches, schools, and restaurants had almost no impact on health outcomes across states," the CUP report found, Fox News said.
"States with strict lockdowns had virtually no better performance in COVID death rates than states that remained mostly open for business."
Twenty-one states with Republican attorneys general sued late last month to halt the federal government's requirement that people wear masks on planes, trains, ferries, and other public transportation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawsuit, announced by Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, contends that the mask mandate exceeds the authority of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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