Poll: Democrats Are Significantly More Miserable Than Republicans
A new Gallup survey finds that Republicans are happier and less prone to feeling anxious, lonely or bored than Democrats amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Gallup began tracking the demographics of the emotions that coincide with the nation’s health and economic crises on March 23 and found that overall, people are worrying less in May than they were two months ago.
As states begin to reopen from lockdowns, according to the poll released on Monday, more Americans are feeling happier.
In the most recent poll, conducted between April 27 and May 10, 72 percent of respondents reported feeling happy “during a lot of the day yesterday.” That is an increase of 5 percentage points from March 23-April 5, when 67 percent of people answered the same way.
Meanwhile, 47 percent of those surveyed in the most recent poll reported feeling a sense of worry “during a lot of the day yesterday.”
By comparison, 59 percent of respondents reported feeling worried when asked the same question in late March and early April.
In its most recent survey, Gallup noted a correlation between emotions and the party affiliation of respondents.
A higher percentage of Republicans and independents reported feeling happiness when compared to the share of Democrats who said they felt that way. Meanwhile, Democrats seemed to report feeling negative emotions at a generally higher rate than Republicans and independents.
But Republicans seemed to be the happiest of the bunch.
Seventy-seven percent of Republicans reported feeling happiness during the day prior to being surveyed, compared to 74 percent of independents and 66 percent of Democrats.
More Democrats than Republicans also reported feeling the emotions of loneliness and boredom on the day prior to being surveyed.
Twenty-eight percent of Democrats reported feeling loneliness, compared to 23 percent of independents and 19 percent of Republicans.
Independents were most likely to be bored (43 percent), compared to 42 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans.
The survey also found that Democrats were far more worried than any of the groups surveyed, and edged out Republicans in this category by 20 points.
Fifty-eight percent of Democrats said they had felt worried a day prior to being polled, compared to 44 percent of independents and 38 percent of Republicans.
“Results for this Gallup poll are based on self-administered web surveys conducted April 27-May 10, 2020, with a random sample of 8,712 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, who are members of the Gallup Panel. Gallup uses probability-based, random sampling methods to recruit its Panel members,” the polling organization noted.
“For results based on any individual sample, the margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error for subgroups are higher.”
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