WASHINGTON — People in parts of the country that voted for President Donald Trump have worried less about COVID-19, especially as the new coronavirus was first emerging in the U.S., a new study out of Rice University found.

The study comes as Trump pushes to reopen the economy, with the backing of Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who took preliminary steps to reopen some businesses on Friday, while extending school closures.

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The findings suggest that the new coronavirus — and efforts to curb its spread — have fallen into the partisan divide, something that appears to be the case in Texas, where a group of conservatives, including an influential Texas activist, penned an open letter to Trump this week, calling stay-at-home orders “tyranny.”

“Even when — objectively speaking — death is on the line, partisan bias still colors beliefs about facts,” the study said. “Relying solely on compliance with voluntary suggested measures in the presence of different political views on the crisis may have limited effectiveness; instead, enforcement may be required to successfully flatten the curve.”

Counties with the most Trump voters saw far fewer Google searches about the virus, and social distancing was 40 percent less prevalent in those areas than in other counties, according to Rice Business professor Yael Hochberg, who co-authored the study.

The study used internet search data, as well as smartphone data to analyze average daily travel distance and visits to non-essential businesses over the last several weeks. It found that searches were low and travel was common in Trump country, especially in the early weeks of the outbreak.

THE PARTISAN DIVIDE: Texas conservatives call stay-home orders ‘tyranny.’ Some lawmakers agree.

Even as states began to issue stay-at-home mandates, the study found that counties that went for Trump in 2016 were slow to begin social distancing. Daily travel distance in those counties dropped by less than 7 percent, compared to a more than 9-percent drop in daily travel in counties with fewer Trump voters.

“Only when the federal order to ‘slow the spread’ arrived from the White House do high Trump counties begin to catch up,” the study said.

The study also found that trend started to change after March 9, when it was announced that COVID-19 had struck the Conservative Political Action Committee meetings and conservative politicians — including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — were self-quarantined, “suggesting that their risk perceptions are affected not by changes in fundamental underlying risk, but rather by political-related interpretations of the risk.”

The study found more people began searching for Fox News stories about the coronavirus after CPAC, “consistent with Fox News viewers playing catchup once their ‘own’ are affected.”

ben.wermund@chron.com