Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum have something in common: They were in governors mansions for most or all of the time the federal government said COVID-19 was a public health emergency.

Through the end of that emergency on May 11 of this year, more than a million Americans perished, countless businesses closed and then reopened, and the unemployment rate shot up beyond 14% and then almost as quickly came back down.

But as the U.S. returned to some, albeit altered, sense of normalcy, the questions remain: Could more lives have been saved? Did the economic road back have to be so long and bumpy?

To answer those questions for the three presidential candidates/governors, HuffPost looked at Centers for Disease Control and Infection data, government economic statistics and private sector estimates.

The three governors present very different profiles. DeSantis took a lot of criticism for being slow to close public spaces in his state, including beaches, at the start of the pandemic. And while he waded into the presidential race as the frontrunner to upset Donald Trump, his campaign has sputtered, and hes turned to the culture wars as a way to revive it.

Hutchinson, who left office in January after two terms as Arkansas governor, is the most old school of the group, having been a three-term congressman and serving the Bush administration as chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration and an undersecretary in Homeland Security.

He hasnt been shy about his disdain for Trump and has called on him to quit the race. But hes had trouble gaining traction, competing with former congressman Will Hurd and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie for the Never Trumper primary lane.

Burgum, now in his second term as North Dakotas governor, has touted himself as the business candidate, playing to his history as a former software exec who sold his company to Microsoft for a billion dollars. On his website, he proudly notes he was called the Best Entrepreneurial Governor by Forbes.

Here are some of the big takeaways.

Florida under DeSantis did pretty well in terms of preventing COVID deaths at least before vaccines were available.

For health outcomes, HuffPost looked at two measures: COVID deaths per 100,000 state residents, adjusted for age, and potential years of life lost to premature deaths, with premature deaths defined as those occurring before the age of 75.

The CDC reported deaths per 100,000 residents for each state for the first and second years of the pandemic, 2020 and 2021. Averaging the two years data together, Florida saw a rate of 84.05 deaths per 100,000, while North Dakota saw a rate of 96.4 and Arkansas a rate of 108.95.

For the nation, the average for the two years was 93.15 deaths, according to CDC data .