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People who voted for Donald Trump in the last election are less likely to now report better mental health than those who supported President Joe Biden, according to a study.
Overall, a majority (87 percent) of the 1,750 American adults taking part in the study published in Political Research Quarterly declared that their general health was "about the same," with 71 percent saying their mental health has also not gotten significantly better or worse since the 2020 presidential election.
However, when broken down between those who voted for the former and the current president, those who supported the Republican were less likely to report they now have better mental health, but not general health, than their counterparts who voted for the current president.
Among Trump voters, only 7 percent reported better mental health since the 2020 election, compared to 23 percent of Biden supporters.
The results of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Boston's Northeastern University in December 2020, are similar between those who believe and don't believe Biden fraudulently won the last election. Biden was legitimately elected president and countless state audits have disproven Trump and his allies' claims that voter fraud "stole" the presidency from him.
A total of 19 percent of people who believed Biden won in 2020 have better mental health, but only 7 percent of those who believe Trump's false claims that Biden lost the last election reported better mental health.
"These relationships persist even in the context of a wide range of controls, including demographics, political predispositions, and perceptions of polarization," an abstract of the study states.
Aaron Weinschenk, the Ben J. and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and lead author of the study, told PsyPost that he and fellow researcher Costas Panagopoulos, head of Northeastern's political science department, wanted to examine the effect of people's mental health following the last election to its "incredibly emotionally-charged and contentious nature."
The researchers said that logistic regression analysis of the survey answers suggests there is evidence to show a "negative and statistically significant effect" that Trump voters had worse mental health than Biden voters" after the 2020 election.
Those taking part in the study were also asked if they believe the political divide between Republicans and Democrats is less, the same, or greater now than before the 2020 election.
Weinschenk said that those who think the country is more divided now than pre-2020 were also more likely than their counterparts to report worse mental health.
"It appears that some features of our current political system (beyond elections) impact health," he told PsyPost.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more