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Median Voters’ Happiness Cycles in the United States Along the Nation’s Principal Political Fault Line

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Abstract

Data from the General Social Survey are used to examine the political polarization in the United States, by examining presidential periods from 1972 to 2018. Our findings indicate that there has been an increased correlation between party identification and ideological identification, resulting in a steady shift towards the extremes. Furthermore, we explore how subjective wellbeing plays a role in driving this polarization. American politics is polarized between happy conservative Republicans and unhappy liberal Democrats. Oscillating in the “happiness gap” between these extremes are median voters whose happiness, low on average, falls the longer in power the party of the opposing ideology. It is the rise and fall of median voters’ unhappiness that drives the regime change between the two major political parties in the United States.

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Notes

  1. People sorting themselves in communities based on like-mindedness.

  2. We use subjective well-being and happiness interchangeably in this article.

  3. There are interesting subcultural variations. Podhoretz (2010) asks why American Jews “live rich but vote poor.” American Jews, despite their material success in America, vote predominantly for Democrats. Podhoretz says this is because the Democratic Party represents the closest counterparts to the forces on the left that favored Jewish emancipation in Europe. As a result, the American Jewish attitude towards Christian conservatives is most frequently one of contempt. There is a strong echo of the Menshevik Jews who fled to America, with a gradual attenuation of Marxism into social democracy and social democracy into the liberalism that has become the very essence of American Jewish culture.

  4. Few studies have explored the topic. Di Tella and MacCulloch 2005 found that people are happier when their chosen party is in power, while Flavin and Keane (2012) observed that SWB is related to turnover intentions. Goldman et al (2019), found that despair is associate with the county-level Trump vote swing in 2016, while a few studies have found that SWB is correlated with voting intention and outcome in Europe and the US (Herrin et al., 2018; Liberini, Redoano and Proto 2017; Ward 2020).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, GR 31, Richardson, TX, 75080, USA

    Brian J. L. Berry

  2. Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, 135 East 22Nd Street, 422, New York, NY, 10010, USA

    Rubia R. Valente

  3. Department of Public Policy and Administration, Rutgers University – Camden, 311 North Fifth Street, Camden, NJ, 08102, USA

    Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn

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  1. Brian J. L. Berry
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Correspondence to Rubia R. Valente.

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Appendix

Appendix

Distribution of GSS Respondents by Party and Political Ideology by Gender

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Table 6 Distribution of GSS responses 1972–1980, men
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Table 7 Distribution of GSS responses 1972–80, women
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Table 8 Distribution of GSS Responses 1980–92, Men
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Table 9 Distribution of GSS responses 1980–92, women
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Table 10 Distribution of GSS responses 1992–2000, men
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Table 11 Distribution of GSS responses 1992–2000, women
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Table 12 Distribution of GSS responses 2001–2008, men
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Table 13 Distribution of GSS responses 2001–2008, women
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Table 14 Distribution of GSS responses 2009–2016, men
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Table 15 Distribution of GSS responses 2009–2016, women
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Table 16 Distribution of GSS responses 2016–2018, men
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Table 17 Distribution of GSS responses 2016–2018, women
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Robustness check:

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Table 18 Logit of liberals in A1 and conservatives in A2 (lumping moderates/independents with base case)
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Berry, B.J.L., Valente, R.R. & Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. Median Voters’ Happiness Cycles in the United States Along the Nation’s Principal Political Fault Line. Applied Research Quality Life 19, 321–349 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-023-10243-3

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