Obama says he will run again in November. Will the tea party candidates trump him? They complain a lot about the government, but their candidates don’t always win, and we know why: Contented people are more likely to vote than unhappy ones.
Political scientist Patrick Flavin also found that discontented people are no more likely to take part in political protests than contented ones, which came as a surprise to him. He originally theorized that satisfied people might be less likely to vote or participate in other political activities because they would not feel much of a desire for change compared to dissatisfied people. When he analyzed representative data of 1,300 respondents from the American National Election Studies and correlated it with responses to a "happiness index" questionnaire, he found a positive relationship between life satisfaction and political participation that held even after controlling for income, gender, race, education and other factors, so Flavin says, "We can say with confidence that people who reported being more satisfied with their lives are more likely to get involved in politics."
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