Republicans Report Having The Bestest Marriages Ever, Are Probably Lying

Republicans, probably.

Hey-o, it's time for Science Korner, where the doctors dig into people's brains and find out why Republicans are the best at everything, and also the happiest, and why liberals are all just a buncha Eeyores who are bad at America. Here's your new study about how Republicans do marriage so much better than Democrats, according to Republicans:

Self-identified Republicans are more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than self-identified Democrats, [sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox] writes, based on an analysis of the General Social Survey, an oft-studied national poll. Republicans also report being more satisfied with their marriages on average than Democrats.

Among married people between the ages of 20 and 60, 67 percent of Republicans report being “very happy” with their marriages. Among Democrats, the share was 60, as it is among independents, write Mr. Wilcox and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a professor at the University of Utah.

Wilcox reports that, even when controlled for demographic differences -- for instance, "Whites and the religiously observant are both more likely to be Republicans and more likely to report having happy marriages" -- there is still a gap. But is this true, or is science LYING AT YOU AGAIN? Or, more specifically, are these Republicans saying, "Yeah, my marriage is great!" but what you can't see is that they're crying into their tattered copies of Fifty Shades   Of Grey because their Republican husbands are off having "boys' night" again, and so they're saying, "Yeah, it's great. So great. GREAT!" to the nice pollster on the telephone, mostly because they're grateful to have somebody to talk to?

MAYBE. Because remember that OTHER recent study, which found that Republicans are lying liars when it comes to reporting things about how happy they are? Here is what it said, specifically:

“What our evidence suggests is that it’s limited to self-reports of subjective well-being,” Professor [Peter] Ditto said. The article appears in the March 13 issue of the journal Science.

In fact, when behaviors rather than self-reports were examined, liberals seemed to have a small but statistically significant happiness edge.

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In our Wonkette Science Analysis of that study, we concluded that "conservatives 'self-enhance' their responses about how happy they are, but their behavior and not-so-smiley-after-all faces indicate that they are delusional and/or lying. Wow, are we surprised." SO surprised.

So hey, maybe Republicans really are happier, and do all the best marriages, and have literally nothing bad going on in their lives, or maybe they are dumb, or maybe they are liars, or maybe some Republicans have a really warped sense of what "happy" is supposed to look like:

 
 Soooooo happy.

Let's just go with "all of the above," except for the one about how they're actually happier, because as if.

[ New York Times ]