Democrats are among the demographic groups with the lowest personal satisfaction in their life, while Republicans are among the most satisfied, a Gallup poll revealed Thursday.
Gallup broke its survey sample into 21 different subgroups, and among them Democrats ranked next to lowest in their personal satisfaction level. The only subgroup to express lower personal satisfaction was the demographic of those earning less than $40,000 a year.
Only 56 percent of self-described Democrats said they are “very satisfied” with their personal life, while 86 percent said they were “satisfied.”
Republicans by contrast were the second most satisfied subgroup of the 21, falling only behind the group with a yearly salary of more than $100,000. A full 80 percent of Republicans said they are “very satisfied” with their personal life, and 93 percent said they are “satisfied.”
In his analysis of the data, Dr. William Donohue, a sociologist and the president of the Catholic League, said that the reason for Democrats’ all-around unhappiness has little to do with race or economic factors and everything to do with religious faith.
“Surveys done on wellbeing have consistently found that there is a positive correlation between religiosity (religious beliefs and practices) and happiness; the more religious a person is the happier he is likely to be,” Donohue noted.
The Pew Research Center released a study last year that found that “actively religious people are more likely than their less-religious peers to describe themselves as ‘very happy,’” Donohue added.
Whereas white Democrats “are the most secular segment of the population,” Donohue argued, studies show that blacks are much more religious than whites and black Democrats “have more in common with Republicans when it comes to religiosity than they do with white Democrats.”
In fact, as Pew revealed in May 2018, black and Hispanic Democrats are more similar to Republicans “on a host of religious measures” and non-white Democrats are far more likely to believe in God, regularly attend church services, pray daily, and call themselves Christians than white Democrats.
Four times as many white Democrats say they do not believe in God or any higher power (21 percent) as compared with nonwhite Democrats (five percent) and all Republicans (five percent), Pew found.
“So when religion is factored in, we are left with the conclusion that it is white secular Democrats who are the most dissatisfied and the least happy,” Donohue concluded. “It is not race and party preference that makes one happy or unhappy. What matters is religiosity.”
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