Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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 is exactly why I don’t stay up and watch election results coverage. I’d rather wake up the next morning, then find out who won and who lost. Easier to deal with, and less stressful . . .
The pouty Chris Matthews face meme pretty much proves the correctness of this theory despite how much I poo-pooed it above.
I want to revisit this post to say, through the grin plastered on my face, that it isn’t true. I could not be happier. I guess the Kennedy School of Government is as wrong about this as about everything else.
An institution that should be abolished. Or at least rename it “The Kennedy School of Harvard Indoctrination”.
The ratio of conservative survivors to liberal survivors from this liberal bastion is very low . . .
How’s Raconteur?
Thanks for asking; he’s relieved. He’s over in Raleigh tonight at Republican headquarters.