First impressions matter for medical meetings. (© AnnaStills - stock.adobe.com)
Many Americans Now Choosing Their Physicians Based on Politics
In a nutshell
- Trust reversal: While Republicans were slightly more trusting of their doctors a decade ago, Democrats are now 12 percentage points more likely to express “a great deal” of trust in their physicians.
- Political preferences matter: Both Republicans and Democrats strongly prefer doctors who share their political affiliation, sometimes placing as much importance on political alignment as on shared race or gender.
- Health implications: With Trump voters over 50 being 11 percentage points less likely to closely follow their doctor’s advice, this partisan divide could affect health outcomes and potentially widen existing mortality gaps between Republican and Democratic counties.
EUGENE, Ore. — Polarization across America has grown like ivy, with its leaves stretching deep into a surprising new battleground: the doctor’s office. Research published in the British Journal of Political Science reveals that Americans’ trust in their personal physicians—once a rare nonpartisan sanctuary—has become increasingly divided along political lines, with potentially serious implications for public health.
The study, conducted by Neil O’Brian from the University of Oregon and independent researcher Thomas Bradley Kent, shows that Democrats now express significantly more trust in their doctors than Republicans do—a complete reversal from just a decade ago. This partisan healthcare trust gap, which didn’t exist before the COVID-19 pandemic, shows that political polarization has affected even our most personal medical relationships.
The Fauci Effect
What makes this research particularly striking is how rapidly this partisan divide developed. In 2013, Republicans actually reported slightly higher trust in their personal doctors than Democrats. By 2022, the tables had turned dramatically, with Democrats approximately 12 percentage points more likely than Republicans to report “a great deal” of trust in their physicians.
Unlike nearly every other major American institution, medicine remained largely untouched by partisan divides throughout the 2010s. The General Social Survey, which tracks Americans’ attitudes toward various institutions, shows that confidence in the scientific community, education, the press, and many other institutions had already polarized along partisan lines by 2010. Medicine, however, remained stubbornly nonpartisan until 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust public health officials into the spotlight, where they quickly became lightning rods for partisan conflict. The study found strong evidence that as medical authorities like Dr. Anthony Fauci became political targets, the distrust spilled over into Americans’ relationships with their own personal doctors.
In one revealing experiment, the researchers exposed participants to a headline from President Trump’s first term in office when called Dr. Fauci “a Democrat.” Trump voters who read this headline subsequently reported lower trust in their own personal doctors, while Biden voters expressed increased trust—proving that partisan messaging about one medical authority directly affected how people viewed their own healthcare providers.
Choosing Doctors Based on Politics
The study goes beyond simple surveys to demonstrate how this divide manifests in real-world decisions. Through a series of experiments, the researchers show that both Republicans and Democrats strongly prefer doctors who share their political affiliation—sometimes placing as much importance on political alignment as they do on shared race or gender with their healthcare provider.
In one experiment, participants were asked to choose between hypothetical dermatologists with various attributes including political affiliation. The difference between Democrats’ and Republicans’ likelihood of selecting a Democratic versus Republican doctor was 28 percentage points when controlling for all other attributes like proximity, qualifications, and patient ratings.
For some demographics, shared political identity with a doctor was just as important as—or more important than—shared race or gender. Among Democratic women, Black Democrats, and Hispanic Democrats, having a doctor who shared their political affiliation was at least as important as having one who shared their gender or race.
Perhaps most concerning is evidence that some Americans are now actively seeking out healthcare providers based on political alignment. When researchers randomly assigned participants to read about a traditional doctor-finding website versus one specifically connecting patients with conservative healthcare providers, conservative respondents expressed significantly more interest in the politically aligned option.
Health Consequences of Political Division
The implications extend beyond just feelings of trust. When asked about their willingness to follow medical advice, Trump voters over 50 were about 11 percentage points less likely than Biden voters to say they followed their doctor’s advice “extremely closely” or “very closely.” This gap could have serious health consequences, as research has consistently shown that patients who trust their doctors are more likely to follow treatment recommendations, complete preventive screenings, and manage chronic conditions effectively.
Between 2001 and 2019, researchers observed a growing gap in death rates between Republican and Democratic counties, with people in Democratic counties living longer. If partisan divides continue to influence healthcare decisions, this gap may widen further, creating a feedback loop where political identity affects health outcomes, which then reinforce political divisions.
A Global Phenomenon
This trend isn’t isolated to the United States. Data from the International Social Survey Programme shows similar patterns in countries like Germany, where support for far-right parties correlates with declining trust in doctors. German far-right supporters were slightly more likely than average voters to trust doctors in 2011, but by 2021, they were 13 percentage points less likely to express trust.
As society faces increasing deaths of despair, a broader crisis in mental health, and lagging life expectancy compared to other developed nations, understanding how politics influences healthcare relationships becomes crucial. The doctor-patient relationship has traditionally been a cornerstone of effective healthcare delivery, but it now appears vulnerable to the same partisan forces that have divided so many other aspects of modern life.
In today’s polarized climate, Americans increasingly make life choices based on political identity—where to live, what media to consume, whom to associate with, and now, potentially, whom to trust with their health. As one doctor’s visit could mean the difference between early diagnosis and late-stage disease, the stakes of this political division are literally life and death.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The researchers used several methodological approaches to investigate partisan divides in healthcare trust. They analyzed survey data from different time periods to track changes in three key measures: general confidence in medicine as an institution, trust in one’s personal doctor, and adherence to a doctor’s advice.
They then conducted a series of experiments. In one, participants were randomly shown a headline about Dr. Fauci being labeled a Democrat, and researchers measured how this affected trust in personal doctors. Another experiment asked people to choose between hypothetical dermatologists with various attributes including political affiliation. A third experiment tested whether people would prefer healthcare platforms that connect patients to politically aligned providers.
Results
The study found that while Republicans were slightly more trusting of their personal doctors than Democrats in 2013, by 2022 Democrats were approximately 12 percentage points more likely to express “a great deal” of trust in their personal doctors. Similarly, there was no partisan divide in confidence in medicine as an institution in 2019, but by 2022, that gap had grown to nearly 26 percentage points, with Democrats expressing greater confidence.
The experiments showed that both Democrats and Republicans strongly preferred doctors who shared their political affiliation, even when controlling for all other attributes such as proximity, qualifications, and patient ratings. For some demographics, having a doctor who shared their political affiliation was as important as having one who shared their gender or race.
Limitations
Some of the experiments relied on convenience samples rather than nationally representative samples, so the results may not fully represent the general population. The study also relies primarily on self-reported measures of trust and adherence rather than objective behavioral measures.
The researchers acknowledge that changes in the makeup of the parties’ supporters (such as educational differences) may account for part of the correlation between partisanship and trust. Their analysis shows controlling for education only modestly reduces the predictive power of partisanship.
Funding and Support
Support for this research was provided by faculty research funds from the University of Oregon. The authors declared no competing interests. The research was approved by the University of Oregon’s Institutional Review Board (# 598 and 554).
Publication Information
The study “Partisanship and Trust in Personal Doctors: Causes and Consequences” was authored by Neil A. O’Brian from the Department of Political Science at the University of Oregon and Thomas Bradley Kent, an independent researcher. It was published in the British Journal of Political Science in 2025. The article is available as an Open Access article under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution and reproduction provided the original article is properly cited.
If you are choosing a medical doctor based on his or her politics, you don’t need a physician, you need a psychiatrist – STAT!!!!
If only.. a dr. Likely to give you remdesvir is a real threat
I’m fairly certain my primary is a Democrat, and I could care less. He’s very good. As a woman who has traveled, I am skeptical of doctors that aren’t Christian or are from countries with long histories of brutal misogyny. Americans have no idea how we’re viewed by other countries. How does an individual shed a culture in which they’ve been raised? They don’t.
It’s fairly clear-Americans WANT American holistic doctors NOT “sold” TO big pharma selling “oil” as a palliative, from algore,-NO brownstains, no baphomet worshipers, NO pharmakians…what is SO hard about that?
Didja’ KNOW I can discriminate to ONLY white/Christian/heteronormy doctors? AND that’s quite “legal”…?
Medicine is an art and not a science. However, after witnessing the COVID vaccine killing my father due to an overload of his autoimmune system, I came to realize that painting by numbers qualifies as an art.
Would you trust Drs coming through the AMA that thinks children should be drugged to cahange their genders, and men can be women?
And they would not give anyone any medication like HCQ/Ivermectin to keep covid19 at bay, forcing people like my sibling into ICU for a month trying to kill them for $?
And told my entire family they needed a “vaccine” that has poisoned their bodies?
You are damm right we are choosing our doctors for their beliefs: our health is at stake depending on their beliefs. Freedom of choice or slavery to government edicts. This is critical and if a doctor does not believe we have the right to bodily autonomy: they are fired.
Given the laws being passed on a doctor determining mental health concerns stopping a person from their 2nd amendment right to self defense with a firearm, I am not surprised.
I don’t want a doctor who believes that abortion (i.e. the murder via dismemberment or vacuuming out of innocent nascent human lives) is synonymous with women’s reproductive health. Only a moral imbecile with no critical thinking ability would think that abortion is equivalent with women’s reproductive health.
I ask them if they beleive I need a Covid shot, If they say yes I’m out the door. That means they are stupid or a criminal. Trust me…it weeds many out.
Dr Fauci was very useful to me. Just like a stock advisor who is always wrong. If you find a stock advisor who is 100% wrong, you listen to that advisor and do the opposite of what he recommends. Fauci was always wrong about everything. I just did the opposite of what Fauci recommended. I took dietary supplements that were the opposite of Fauci’s ban of HCQ. I have not had a cold or flu since before COVID-19. Through dumb luck, I had to treat my wife, an Alzheimer’s patient, for horrid bed sores. The veterinarian pharmaceuticals I used included ivermectin. The drugs stopped the infection that was destroying her brain, (likely a fungus). She is in a bad state, needing to be hand fed, but has not deteriorated a bit since I stopped the brain infection. No deterioration in 18 months. Possibly a slight improvement with DMSO, 1tsp/day. Very subjective but has been indicating when she wants the next bit of food when I feed her.
I’m not buying this for one minute. I don’t know my internist’s nor my ophthalmologist’s political affiliations nor they mine.
For all I know they could be members of the Green Party,.
My dentist is a MAGA supporter- I’m an independent- but I chose him years before the MAGA movement existed. Neither because of nor despite his politics because it wasn’t something either one of us discussed at the time.
Maybe the divide also comes from the treatment differences during that thing that happened a few years back. My brother was maimed by the vaccines and I had a close friend basically murdered because of politically driven treatment. I don’t follow politics…I just know what I saw and this old fart has since divorced himself from the pharma/medical industrial complex.
I can see Americans having preferences, but I wonder what democrat-voters do …….
Democratic voters are Americans.
See, this is what is wrong with MAGA. You’re dead enders. You are anti-democracy, you have no interest in an America that includes the other 50% of us.
I’d be very concerned if I realized my doctor approved of Robert Kennedy Jr being appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Could it be that we Republicans have figured out that much of today’s medicine is hokum dished out by Big Pharma and lacks credibility when we take the time to do our own research? Your assumption is that our decisions to not follow “the science” and take the pills worsens our chances and I take issue with that.
As shown by the COVID and gender “affirmation” disasters, we have good reason not to trust the medical profession. Also, we can’t trust leftist providers. They’re dangerous because of their ideological bent…
The healthcare industry chose politics and protocols over providing the best care for the individual.
If you’re picking your doctor based on their politics, you’re an idiot.
The healthcare left has set the precident! Those in the left have publically stated that they will not offer healthcare to those known to be on the right.
Therefore, to acquire honest healthcare, those on the right must seeek out healthcare that represents their political views. That is a no brainer you idiots!
Wise citizens chose their doctors on the medical schools attended, age, and length of time in practice. Older physicians were not required to take courses in DEI, and got a medical degree because of merit. Unfortunately, physicians with the best training and skills are retiring at a rapid rate.