Blessed are the incumbents

Happiness and party attachments in Europe

Abstract

Partisan attachments have a strong effect on how people perceive political actions and how they evaluate new political information. Accordingly, people perceive less corruption, have more trust in the national government, and are more satisfied with how political institutions and democracy work in their countries if their preferred party is in office. This paper investigates whether partisan cues have a similar effect outside the political world, namely, whether being attached to an incumbent party predicts one’s happiness. The analysis uses data from the European Social Survey, including seven survey rounds from 30 European countries between 2002 and 2015. Regression models suggest that being attached to an incumbent party increases happiness. Moreover, the interaction effects show that the closer people feel to their preferred party, the larger the happiness gap is between government and opposition supporters. These results show that partisan motivations are in play in the non-political sphere of life as well, and they complement earlier research showing an intense, but short-term effect of winning an election on voters’ happiness.