Author(s)

Paul M. Sommers

Department of Economics, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, USA.

The author examines age-group specific suicide rates by state in the United States presidential election years of 2008, 2012 and 2016. For each election year, the states are divided into blue states (whose voters chose the Democratic Party presidential candidate) and red states (whose voters chose the Republican Party presidential candidate). While suicide rates have trended higher in all states, the differences in mean suicide rates in 2012 (when Democrat Barack Obama was re-elected) were significantly higher in red states than they were in blue states for every age group but adults 55 to 64 years of age. In 2016, when the Republican Party re-captured the White House late in the year, mean differences were notably higher in red states than in blue states among adults between 25 and 54 years of age.

Suicide Rates, Presidential Elections, Red and Blue States

Sommers, P. (2018) Suicide Rates in U.S. Presidential Election Years: 2008, 2012 and 2016. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 33-48. doi: 10.4236/jss.2018.68003.