Republicans Report Better Mental Health

In a new Gallup poll, Republicans were found to be "significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent… Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."


Gallup goes on to conclude that "one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel)."

By their own conclusion, they've lost the fact that their own findings only show that Republicans report having excellent mental health in higher numbers, not that they have excellent mental health in higher numbers, which is a pretty important distinction.

It also makes understanding the relationship between Republicanism and reporting excellent mental health pretty easy to understand, and it comes down to the immortal words of our last Democratic president: "I feel your pain." A lack of empathy is a key feature of modern Republicanism, and, in a world that treats a whole lot of people like rubbish, being empathetic can be a profoundly and quite literally depressing proposition.

I'm not suggesting there are no empathetic Republicans, or no self-centered Democrats; that's why the numbers aren't 100% and 0%. But generally speaking, one party platform speaks to social Darwinists and the other speaks to social safety netters. Every man for himself v. We're all in this together. Bearing that in mind, it's not even difficult to understand why a Republican who didn't actually have excellent mental health might report having such, anyway—to admit anything less would be tantamount to admitting personal failure.

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