How do the happiest people vote?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I can see arguments for all 3:

One could argue happy people are more likely to lean Republican because in general, happy people are less likely to be actively facing big hardships in terms of finance, health, or social status, all things which tend to make people more liberal. The lack of these concerns may make them lean more right.

One could argue happy people are more likely to lean Democratic because today a lot of Republican messaging is based on populism that invokes fear and anger which probably be way less effective on a truly happy person. Furthermore, Democrats increasingly do better with college educated voters, and generally more educated people are happier.

One could argue they don't vote because being engaged in politics is a large part of the reason many people are unhappy. Basically "ignorance is bliss".

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think there's research saying that happier people tend to be more politically conservative, no?

I've seen that before, but I think it's self-reported which makes things tricky; Conservatives are significantly less likely to say if they're unhappy, struggling mentally, ect.

Furthermore, that research could be a bit outdated by now as the GOP has leaned into full Trumpism.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think there's research saying that happier people tend to be more politically conservative, no?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009265660800175X (from 2009)

we predicted that political conservatism and liberalism would relate to less negative and greater positive affect, respectively. As hypothesized, stronger political conservatism and liberalism predicted greater life satisfaction. Whereas stronger liberalism predicted greater positive affect, stronger conservatism predicted less negative affect. Thus, both political conservatism and liberalism are related to components of happiness.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914004553 (from 2015)

Highlights
• Political conservatism and religiosity positively correlate with happiness.
• Political conservatism and religiosity interact in predicting happiness.
• Religiosity has a greater effect on happiness for political conservatives.
• These results were found in the General Social Survey [2012] and World Values Survey [2005].

Cross-culturally, higher social trust seems more strongly correlated with increased happiness in more individualistic societies, e.g. liberal democracies with a Western cultural legacy. So partisan realignment along social trust may mean that the D coalition is becoming happier relative to the population as a whole, even though ideological conservatives may also continue to have above-average happiness as well.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886921008308 (from 2022)

Highlights
• All types of social trust positively predicted individual level well-being.
• National culture conditions the effects of personal contributors of well-being.
• Social trust more strongly associated with well-being in individualistic cultures.
• The well-being benefits of social trust may be enhanced by individual autonomy.

This sort of aligns with what I'd imagine. My stereotype of the happiest people in the US would be high social trust moderate/conservatives who are religious, financially well-off, have children and generally good family bond, ect. Probably a lot of Romney-->Biden voters in this group.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think there's research saying that happier people tend to be more politically conservative, no?

I've seen that before, but I think it's self-reported which makes things tricky; Conservatives are significantly less likely to say if they're unhappy, struggling mentally, ect.

This is literally what it means to be happy.  To be resilient to negative feelings and external stressors.  A conservative worldview is correlated with all sorts of cognitive behaviors (i.e., increased religiosity, more moral clarity, better sense of self-empowerment, etc.) that are demonstrated to improve mental well-being.

The idea that Republican messaging is so overwhelmingly negative that conservatives must be angry, scared, depressed is a Democrat fantasy. And even if it was true, are liberal messages about climate change or the future health of U.S. democracy very positive?

There may be some truth to this, but happiness isn't always the type of thing where you can fake it till you make it - I think liberals are just way more likely to be blunt about if they're actually happy or not. I also think in modern day politics, those who actually are religious, have high moral clarity, and a good sense of self-empowerment may not be as Republican friendly these days as we might expect - for instance religious Trump voters tend to not have good church attendence.

I generally tend to believe people on either extreme of the political spectrum tend to be less happy - the far-right types of who believe in the great replacement theory type stuff and those on the left who doom over capitalism and social justice sorts of things.