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The Sanity Gap
A new Gallup poll finds that Republicans are the sanest people in America, or at least think they are:
Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. . . .
While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.
What does this mean? "One could be quick to assume that these differences are based on the underlying demographic and socioeconomic patterns related to party identification in America today," Gallup says. But that doesn't fully explain the discrepancy:
An analysis of the relationship between party identification and self-reported excellent mental health within various categories of age, gender, church attendance, income, education, and other variables shows that the basic pattern persists regardless of these characteristics. In other words, party identification appears to have an independent effect on mental health even when each of these is controlled for.
Gallup provides a set of bar graphs breaking the data down by various factors, demonstrating this independent effect. For instance, people making over $50,000 are considerably likelier to describe their mental health as excellent--but so are Republicans when compared with non-Republicans in both income groups. The only major discrepancy we noted is that going to church seems to be correlated with better mental health only for Republicans.
Without longitudinal data, there is no way to know if the Republican-sanity correlation is enduring or a function of the present moment. It could be, for instance, that Democrats are in a fragile mental state after seven years out of power. Or it could be that people with mental difficulties are more vulnerable to peer pressure than healthier ones and thus have been more prone to leave the GOP because of the party's current unpopularity. In any case, the sanity gap is a fascinating phenomenon that merits further study.
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