Chapter 1: Lifestyle Differences

Introduction

Do Republicans live on the edge?

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday.

Og Mandino, American essayist and psychologist

 

Now that you have been inspired by Mandino, prepare yourself for oodles of information about Democratic and Republican lifestyles - possibly more than you want. This is my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink chapter, and it contains trivia in addition to matters of consequence. It is a smorgasbord of the particulars that distinguish Democratic and Republican lifestyles.

Before getting to those details, however, consider the bottom line: Who leads the more exciting life? Surprisingly, it is Republicans. At least, that is what they think.

General excitement

When asked, Do you find life exciting, pretty routine, or dull? Republicans are consistently more likely to say that life is exciting. As seen in Figure 1, below, this tendency has existed for at least 30 years.

Figure 1. In general, do you find life exciting, pretty routine, or dull? (General Social Surveys (GSS) conducted in 1975 through 2006, based on, left to right, 1946, 3026, 3650, 3233, 2319, and 3355 cases, with a confidence level of 99+% for all differences, and with relative proportions of, left to right, .85, .87, .82, .83, .82, and .88)

 

In addition, Republicans are less likely to be bored. Although equal percentages (about 26%) of Democrats and Republicans say they always feel rushed even to do things [they] have to do, there seems to be a boredom gap for the other 74 percent. Democratic men and women are more likely to say they have extra time they dont know what to do with.

 

Figure 2. How often would you say you have time on your hands that you dont know what to do with? (combined results of GSS surveys conducted in 1982 and 2004, based on, left to right, 575, 794, and 1369 cases, with a confidence level of 99+% for all columns, and with relative proportions of, left to right, .74, .78, and .77)

 

Thus, Republicans are more apt to find life exciting, and less likely to be bored. With that matter settled, lets look deeper into the lifestyles microscope.

Details

Family, relationships, and sex

Sex

Multiple Partners

Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, although there is seldom any reason why they should. Democrats ought to, but don't.

Anonymous (from a document published in the Congressional Record on October 1, 1974)

 

If Republicans lead more exciting lives, it is not in the area of sexual relations. The results of several GSS surveys, shown in Figure 3, tell us that Democrats are more likely to have multiple sexual partners.

Figure 3. Percentage with 2 or more sex partners during the last 12 months (combined results of 6 GSS surveys conducted from 1996 through 2006, based on, left to right, 3662, 4910, and 8572 cases, with confidence level of 99+% for all columns, and with relative proportions of, left to right, 1.52, 1.63, and 1.41)

 

Democrats and Republicans - Rhetoric and Reality

Overview

 

Joe Fried began research for Democrats and Republicans - Rhetoric and Reality in 2004. His goal was to focus on the actual conduct and achievements of the two constituencies:

 

"We have all heard lots of platitudes from Democrats and Republicans, and from pollsters and pundits. For example, Republicans are supposed to favor family values, and Democrats are supposed to advocate free speech. But are these generalities manifested in their every day lives? I wanted to find out."

 

Fried sifted through the results of hundreds of major social surveys, looking for questions that related to specific achievements and conduct. For example, who has a college degree, who gave more to charity during the last year, who worked longer hours in the prior week, and who is more likely to object to controversial speech in his or her neighborhood? The responses to these questions were then cross-tabulated by partisan identification.

 

These are some of the differences that Fried found interesting:

 

·                    Democrats appear to be much less trusting than Republicans. For 30 years the General Social Survey has asked, "Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance?" In each case, Democrats were much more likely to respond Yes. Other surveys show the same tendency. In his book, Fried theorizes that this lack of trust, and certain other discernable character differences, may account for the large happiness gap that exists between Democrats and Republicans.

·                    Even though Social Security is supposed to have a progressive benefit structure, many affluent Republicans do relatively well in the system. In fact, they may get net benefits that are greater than relatively poorer Democrats. What is the problem? The regressive nature of Social Security seems to be related to archaic spousal and survivor benefits.

·                    Conservative Democrats are the polar opposites of conservative Republicans at least with respect to education and apparent intelligence. Fried found an education gap of nearly 2 full years between these two categories of conservatives. Political scientists who fail to note this distinction are likely to reach false conclusions.

·                    The charity gap is enormous, even after controlling for income differences. Fried estimates that charities would get an additional $50 billion per year if Democrats gave as much as Republicans in proportion to their incomes.

·                    Democratic women are now as or more likely to have advanced (graduate) college degrees than Republican women, but at all other levels, Republicans seem to have more education. In addition, Republicans are more likely to correctly answer questions designed to test political knowledge, and are judged to have more apparent intelligence than their Democratic counterparts.

·                    Much of the income disparity between working Democrats and working Republicans is simply caused by Republicans working additional hours per week.

·                    Republicans are a little more likely to express tolerance for controversial speech within their communities no matter what the topic. This has been true for at least 30 years.

 

In addition to the weightier findings, the book is infused with a great deal of trivia. For example, it tells us who is more likely to commit adultery, who watches more TV, and who is more likely to play the lottery. There are even statistics comparing the Body Mass Index of Democrats and Republicans.

 

Although the tone of the book is mostly academic and objective, Fried devotes the last chapter to his own conclusions and interpretations. He presents a lesson that can be learned by studying the findings presented in each of the preceding chapters.

 

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Joe Fried is an MBA, a practicing CPA, and the author of How Social Security Picks Your Pocket (Algora Publishing, 2003), a book about fraud and waste in the Social Security system. He is also the director of the Public Program Testing Organization (PPTO), which is an Ohio-based nonprofit organization that monitors and reports on waste in governmental programs (http://socialsecuritywaste.org).

 

In 2005, Fried and the PPTO alleged that certain Texas school districts had defrauded the Social Security trust fund of more than $2 billion dollars by illegally giving Social Security coverage to thousands of teachers posing as janitors. After investigating those sensational charges, the Office of Inspector General confirmed that the Social Security trust fund would lose approximately $2.2 billion as a result of this abuse. (The OIG audit report can be found at http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/A-09-06-26086.pdf.)

 

Joe Fried's personal Web site is found at http://www.joefried.net.