When Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, “joy” became a theme of her campaign. At least until recently, this comparatively upbeat approach had seemed to pay off, putting Democrats in a stronger position than before Harris became the party’s standard-bearer. As the race reaches the homestretch, however, the momentum appears to be turning against Harris; time will obviously tell. In any case, Democrats unquestionably chose to put “vibes” at the forefront of the Harris campaign, believing that this gave them the best chance of winning.
The Harris campaign has sought to bring various stereotypes of the two parties to the front of the public’s mind. Democrats want to present themselves as the party of the future, optimistic and welcoming change. They seek to portray Republicans, by contrast, as embittered, retrogressive dinosaurs, clinging to unearned privileges. It is not outlandish for people to accept this dichotomy: the trope of the right-wing uncle who ruins family get-togethers with political tirades is now a staple of popular culture. When they embrace angry rhetoric and engage in wild conspiracy theories, some Republican leaders and conservative influencers can reinforce this typecast.
But this description of the parties is not just an oversimplification—it is incorrect. Though the Left likes to characterize conservatism as a reactionary ideology, conservatives themselves consistently claim higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than progressives.
This has been true for decades. Since its inception in the early 1970s, the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked respondents to rank their current level of happiness on a three-point scale: “not too happy,” “pretty happy,” and “very happy.” These data show how the two major parties’ supporters have ranked their happiness over the last five decades.
The gap is not always large, but Republicans have consistently performed better than Democrats on subjective sense of well-being. This has been true in every GSS and regardless of which party dominates in Washington. (I should note, though, that while the partisan happiness gap remains sizable, GOP supporters have also reported recent declines in happiness.)
Democrats also tend to report more frequent emotional issues. In 2018 and 2021, the survey asked: “In the past seven days, how often have you been bothered by emotional problems such as feeling anxious, depressed or irritable?” The possible responses were “never,” “rarely,” “sometimes,” “often,” and “always.” On this measure, we recently witnessed a dramatic increase in self-reported emotional problems among Democrats, but not among Republicans. In 2018, about 28 percent of Democrats reported “never” dealing with these emotional problems in the last week, compared with about 32 percent of Republicans. By 2021, this had dropped to about 15 percent among Democrats; among Republicans, it dropped a much smaller amount, to about 28 percent.
Such disparities have several possible explanations. As Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center pointed out in 2008, Republicans, on average, have more money, have more positive feelings toward their communities, and are more religious. All these variables seem to play a role in happiness. One might reasonably speculate that racial and gender differences between the parties could also explain the happiness gap. A progressive might object that because the Republican Party includes fewer nonwhites and women, and thus fewer supporters subjected to racism and sexism, Republicans’ higher average happiness is just another indication of social iniquities. But according to the regression model that Taylor created to determine the causes of happiness, race, ethnicity, and gender do not play a significant role.
Another possibility: liberals are less happy because they are less likely to form nuclear families. Examining another survey that showed how happiness differed according to ideology, W. Bradford Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies argues that different family-formation patterns can explain this finding. “On the family front, conservative Americans (not politicians, admittedly) have a major advantage,” Wilcox wrote, “in large part because they are more likely to embrace the family-first values and virtues that steer them towards wedlock and fulfilling family lives.”
Conservatives are additionally more likely to display other traits associated with well-being—especially strong beliefs in personal agency. They are more likely to believe that they are in control of their own lives, rather than perennial victims of external circumstances; this conviction itself could result in greater happiness. Other research suggests that conservatives are more likely to feel purpose and meaning in life, which remains true even after controlling for levels of religiosity.
Some scholars have suggested a more positive explanation for progressives’ lower happiness levels. Psychologists Jaime L. Napier and John T. Jost presented evidence indicating that conservative happiness is partly explained by their nonchalance toward inequality. In other words, growing perceptions of inequality reduce progressives’ happiness, on average, but they do not have a similar effect on conservatives. Liberal Weltschmerz, on this view, might be a function of greater empathy for the downtrodden. From this perspective, lower happiness among progressives is a sign of moral superiority. Of course, by most objective measures, America today is a much better place to live than it was in the early 1970s—for people from all groups. Yet, progressives have become notably unhappier since then, suggesting that their perceptions of the world might be skewed.
Maybe the finding of liberal unhappiness is a myth. After all, self-reports of happiness, mental health, and other subjective measures of well-being are not necessarily reliable. In fact, reports of declining mental health may represent little more than a new expression of negative partisanship among Democrats. A fascinating recent study showed that Democrats have become more likely to report higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression when Republicans win high-profile elections—but the study could find no evidence that Democrats’ behavior (as measured by their use of Internet search engines) changed in any significant way. It may be the case, the researchers say, that “some Democrats reported mental health declines after Trump’s election as a form of reverse cheerleading, where partisans report evaluations that are more negative than their true beliefs to reflect badly on a president of the opposing party.”
Regardless of the happiness gap’s underlying cause, its existence undermines the notion that American politics is characterized by confident, optimistic progressives squaring off against dour conservatives. That such stereotypes exist at all suggests poor messaging on the part of Republican politicians and the conservative movement. Angry social media voices are not representative of conservatives overall, and they should not set the tone for the American Right. As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, conservatism is most successful when it presents itself as a positive, cheerful political philosophy. Conservatives do not concede joy in their personal lives; they should not do so in the political arena, either.
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