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Experts Predict: Tonight Will Not Make You Happy
People who have strongly-held politics and identify with one specific side — let’s call them “political partisans” — really get the short end of the stick.
A new study from the Kennedy School at Harvard, analyzing responses to the 2012 general election, found that pretty much everyone was deflated:
Employing a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity model we present two primary findings. First, elections strongly affect the happiness/sadness of partisan losers (for about a week), but minimally impact partisan winners.
I have no idea what a “quasi-experimental regression discontinuity model” is, but it sounds very science-y.
It also sounds sad. You’re upset for a week if you lose (understandable) but not really all that happy if you win? That’s hardly fair.
But it’s the intensity of the losers’ sadness that’s cause for concern:
…we show that partisans are affected two times more intensely by their party losing the U.S. Presidential Election than both respondents with children were to the Newtown Shootings and respondents living in Boston were to the Boston Marathon Bombings.
That’s not right. I mean, I’m sure it’s accurate — they employed a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity model, after all — but I have to wonder about people who take politics that seriously. This is a big, strong country, and if it made it through Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan, it’ll make it through anything.
That said, Scott Walker better win tonight or I will be totes depressed.
Image Credit: Flickr.
Published in General
This finding is creepy and depressing. But let me say, if we win big tonight, I will be over the moon for at least a month.
I may be living with Charlie Crist for the next four years and Florida will no longer be considered a “swing” state. That prospect sickens me because our current governor enticed several businesses to relocate here (using Texas as a guideline) helping to create 370,000 well-paying jobs as he slashed environmental budgets and lowered property taxes.
When somebody says “Employing a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity model…” my mind hears “What I’m about to say probably isn’t true but…”
Study doesn’t account for schadenfreude, that has got to be at least 70% of the joy most people feel in an election cycle. In the immortal words of Eric Cartman: The tears of unfathomable sadness, yummy.
Even the candidates are already letting their vitriol show. Landrieu already has preemptively called the voters of Louisiana racists, and she hasn’t even lost yet. How racist will the American voter be after today, how great his homophobia, and how narrow his mind! They won’t be able to contain their impotent rage.
It makes total sense, considering how little some politician winning a six-figure job-effectively-for-life substantively effects the average person’s life in any real, observable way.
I’m sure plenty of spectators experience similar sadness the day after the World Series, or the Olympics, or the World Cup, or any other long-term sporting event.
I also wager that the results would be different if the study only examined people who are “in the business” of politics, and whose material prosperity going forward is defined heavily by how their client(s) performed.
My mind thinks of a machine that requires a nice hot cup of tea to function.
I was devastated after the 2012 election. I figured I was going to quit Ricochet (after only being a member for a couple months), because what was the point now? Little did I know Ricochet is far more entertaining in between election cycles. It also didn’t hurt that I chucked any notion that democracy was going to fix things.
I would disagree here. It makes perfect sense. A sicko shooting a school or blowing up a finish line doesn’t have near the effect of losing an election has on the average person. While yes, Misthio is right about
it still affects the average person more than freak incidents.
[EDIT] And let’s face it, in terms of historical significance, in ten years we’ll realize that Adam Lanza and the Tsarnev brothers are less important than Charles Guiteau, and I had to even look up his name to make that comparison.
Why is it fair to ask people whether they were more upset over a mass shooting or their presidential candidate losing? And then judge them because the intensity of their feelings did not fall the order the authors thought most justified?
Maybe it’s rational to be less upset by a single, isolated tragedy than seeing your country drift in the wrong direction. The authors of this “study” clearly think that it’s not, but I guarantee that their empirical analysis does not deal with their own underlying assumptions about the correct priority of our emotional reactions to things. Nor could it.
This information is fairly useless without any philosophical discussion accompanying it. It essentially amounts to this: “People who care intensely about something are more likely to be emotionally affected by that thing than those who don’t.” No crap.
Steyn today on Republican victories:
Politics is like sports. Except for brief moments, it’s destined to break your heart.
Steyn makes a good point. The mainstream Republicans are still afraid of the media. They still act as if any degree of moderation with the media will yield any positive results. Nothing is ever enough for the leftoid media cartels. There is no winning them over, there is no compromise; it is just a step towards you adopting their position. They hate us, and will always hate us. Our only approach is to make our own media and thumb our noses at them, and let them starve in their own echo chamber. So long as the Republican party continues to legitimize the media outlets by dealing with them, at all, the beatings will continue.
I have more hope than Steyn though, and I think we’re well on our way to turning this thing around. I really can’t abide defeatists.
It’s a serious moment if your side wins. Your work has just begun.
Misthiocracy
I’m sure plenty of spectators experience similar sadness the day after the World Series…
Pitchers and catchers report: 107 days.
2012 gave me a nihilism that has been, in its strange way, liberating and pleasurable.
If he wins, Walker would have three statewide victories against the full weight of the Deep State…in the home of the Progressives.
I have the Schadenfreude on ice.
heh…awesome Percival.
Time was, the Niners would win a championship and I’d be on cloud 9 but I guess I’ve mellowed considerably. After Pablo caught the foul ball to seal the victory my wife was stunned when I looked over and said, “hey, thats pretty cool”…and that was it. I was more or less over it by the time I went to bed.
That’s why we’re here.
Good point.
Ah, but that realization doesn’t occur in the week subsequent to the election.
My wife and I were not happy after the 2012 election. However, she went on the 2012 post-election National Review cruise, and had an absolute blast! Maybe you remember her – she refers to herself as “Rob Long’s stalker” after the Meetup at Evita’s . . .
Win or lose, I believe this post election cruise is going to be even more jovial. Therefore, I make this promise – I will do my best to hold The Stalker at bay, but sign whatever she hands you, just to be safe . . .
I was devastated after 2012 but I’m not going to get excited or depressed no matter what happens tonight because we still have this guy for the next 2 years.
Not true. I was stalking Peter Robinson at Evita’s. I tried plying Rob with wine the first night, but he proved impervious.
Oh really? I’ll be damned if I’m ever buying you another sweater . . .
I heard there is a vaccine for “QERDM” but I think it is only issued to those with a Harvard diploma.
Twenty years ago I heard Rush Limbaugh state, “If you want to be happy in life, you can’t base it on who wins and who loses elections.” Otherwise it will consume you.
I find it more disturbing to see millions of people vote for policies and people that send our country down the toilet than seeing one raging maniac go on a rampage.
The willing choice of millions vs. the insane choice of one?
Those choices both strike fear in me, but one of those choices more directly affects my daily life.