Republican workers in Trump counties are less likely than their Republican counterparts in Clinton-won counties to say they have made changes to avoid transmission (74 percent versus 82 percent), and both groups are less likely to say they have made changes than Democrats in Trump-won counties (85 percent) or Clinton-won counties (89 percent). The use of personal protective equipment at work fits the same pattern.

The pattern doesn’t always hold perfectly. Most Republican workers in Trump-won counties report trying to maintain at least six feet of distance from customers and co-workers (55 percent). That’s higher than the rate for Republicans in Clinton-won counties (47 percent), but it’s still well below Democrats in Clinton-won counties (70 percent).

One potential explanation for the partisan patterns is that some Republican Party leaders or media pundits are playing down the severity of the risks. Another is that population density and the number of confirmed cases and deaths are lower on a per-capita basis in the counties won by Mr. Trump. But in the data, there is no significant correlation between county disease prevalence and adoption of these countermeasures.

Moreover, while cases and deaths have been lower in Trump-won counties, the growth rate in new cases since April 11 is roughly the same in Trump-won and Clinton-won counties, suggesting that the need to reduce transmission could be just as urgent in these areas.

As debates go on about when and how to reopen the economy, essential workers and their employers are developing best practices to combat the spread of coronavirus. But it will be hard to do so without cooperation and collective action across diverse communities. Because the virus knows no borders, outbreaks in liberal areas will put conservative areas at risk and vice versa.

Jonathan Rothwell is the author of “A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society.” He is the Principal Economist at Gallup, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. You can follow him on Twitter at @jtrothwell, and listen to his podcast, “Out of the Echo Chamber.”