USD College Republicans

Republicans happier than Democrats

It seems that study after study shows Republicans to be happier that Democrats, on average.

I'm just going to post some snippets because I think this article is funny and fascinating.
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"A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as "very happy," compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents). This is a sizable gap and a remarkably consistent one, too. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, began asking about happiness in 1972.

What to make of this finding? Is there something about being a card-carrying member of the GOP that induces a warm, fuzzy feeling, a sort of political Prozac? Or does the river of causality flow in the other direction: Are happy people more likely to become Republicans than Democrats? Or maybe neither explanation holds water and it only appears as if Republicans are happier than Democrats.

The most obvious place to look for an explanation is, of course, with money. Wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones, and Republicans, according to some surveys, tend to be wealthier than Democrats, so that must be why they're happier, right? Nice try, but no dice. Even after adjusting for differences in income, the Pew researchers still found a marked happiness gap: Poor Republicans are, on average, happier than poor Democrats, and wealthy Republicans are happier than wealthy Democrats.

Maybe the answer is power. Republicans have controlled the White House for most of the past 35 years, and nothing spells happiness like p-o-w-e-r. Wrong again. Republican bliss persists even if a Democrat -- be it Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton -- resides in the White House."
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"If this isn't depressing enough for liberals, it turns out that some of their own pet policies are to blame for their unhappiness. Once in power, Democrats tend to focus on issues that, according to the science of happiness, have little effect on our contentment -- income equality, for instance, and racial diversity. Neither is linked to greater happiness. Countries with large disparities between rich and poor are no less happy than more egalitarian ones, studies have found. And the happiest countries in the world tend to be homogenous ones, such as Denmark and Iceland, not the ethnic melting pots that liberals celebrate."
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"All things being equal, voters choose the more optimistic candidate.

This may explain why Republicans have dominated presidential elections in the past 40 or so years. They, of course, have as their happy standard-bearer Ronald Reagan, who smilingly urged us to ask ourselves if we were better off (read: happier) than we'd been four years earlier. On the Democrats' side, John F. Kennedy knew how to play the happiness card, but most of his would-be followers haven't. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry (Jimmy Carter, too, even though he managed to win an election): Happiness does not come to mind when you think of these people. Only Bill Clinton, with his "bridge to the 21st century" and his "Third Way" (part Democratic technocrat, part Republican mirth), managed to break through the happiness barrier."
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"There is, though, an exception to the Happy Republicans trend. More Democrats than Republicans say they're excited about the current election, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News survey conducted in November, and Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the election season leaves them frustrated and bored. Might Democrats be on the verge of transforming themselves into the party of happiness? If so, that would be the ultimate flip-flop."
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 10:17PM Feb 10, 2008 by College Republicans in Republicans  |  Comments[0]