Nothing like coming into the office today and having some n00b Republican wave a printed off article in my face.
“See! Republicans are more sane than the rest of you fools!”
Not only did a laugh erupt from my lips at that exact moment in time, but I also read aloud the first few lines of the article, making sure to emphasize certain words.
“Significantly more Republicans report having good mental health.”
Gallop does surveys and gathers information. It is not their job to exactly determine the mental health of the people they are interviewing. Mostly, they asked someone, “How would you rate your mental health?” and, “What is your political party?” Now, whether the person is actually more sane than the next guy or not, it’s not Gallop’s job to medically assertain that.
I quickly skimmed through the article, looking at the graphs, and then I highlighted one particular paragraph:
Correlation is no proof of causation, of course. The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel).
At which point he fumed, tossing the article in the trash. I am overjoyed at the fact that some radical Republicans have become so desparate to be superior to people of other parties (or no parties) that they would try to bend a survey’s outcome to prove their point.
If anything, this proves to me that more Republicans lie than they tell the truth.