(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)
[A]re you happy?
If you’re a Vermonter, you probably are. Vermont is the 13th-happiest state in the union. Vermonters are not as happy as the folks in Minnesota, Utah or Hawaii (the top three), but happier than any New Englanders except the ones right across the river in New Hampshire.
And they were just a little bit happier.
As to Vermont’s other neighbors, Connecticut and Massachusetts were 18th and 19th happiest, New York was 22nd and Maine 25th. West Virginians were the least happy Americans.
None of this should be a surprise. As was noted here in July, Vermonters were more likely to be satisfied about living in Vermont than the residents of most other states were satisfied about living where they live.
Satisfied people are more likely to be happy than dissatisfied people. But satisfied and happy are not identical. Unhappy people might describe themselves as “satisfied” to be in Vermont because they thought they’d be even less happy elsewhere.
The satisfaction-with-their-state findings were from a Gallup Poll. The happiness results are from a survey by the Washington-based financial research firm WalletHub, which has also issued reports on which states have the best school systems (Vermont is fifth, Massachusetts first, Louisiana last) and which states are most and least politically engaged (Vermont is 21st, the District of Columbia is first, Oklahoma last).
Since Vermont is full of happy people with good schools, it should be no surprise that a separate study – this one by U.S. News & World Report – ranks it the 10th best state overall, among the best when it comes to health care, crime and corrections, and opportunity.
Surveys like this are both interesting and valuable, but perhaps should be taken with a soupcon of skepticism. The conclusions are based on survey research. That’s polling. Polls tend to be reliable when they measure public opinion on simple matters, such as whether respondents plan to vote for Smith or Jones (yes, even most of last year’s campaign polls were accurate). Interpreting them is trickier when the subject is hazier, such as who is and isn’t happy.
The pollsters and analysts at WalletHub and at U.S. News & World Report know this. They didn’t call folks up and say, “Are you happy?” The WalletHub survey is based on criteria accepted in the academic discipline of happiness studies (yes, there is such a discipline; yes, it has a journal) and it designed questions on subjects “across 28 key metrics, ranging from depression rate to sports participation rate to income growth.”
U.S. News measured public satisfaction about health care, education, the economy, a state’s infrastructure, public safety and “the integrity and health of state government.” It gave more weight to schools and health care than to the other factors “based on a survey of what matters most to people.”
Schools and health matter more than the economy?
Could be. The WalletHub survey indicated that great wealth was not what made people happy.
Had U.S. News given greater weight to the economy, Vermont’s overall rating would have been lower. Its economy ranked 33rd best.
There are possible anomalies in Vermont’s ratings in the WalletHub survey, too. How can a happy state with one of the best school systems also have the fifth-highest rate of adult depression and rank as only the 30th best state for teachers?
It turns out that Vermont teachers love their jobs but not their incomes or their prospects for career advancement, perhaps because the number of children to teach is low and getting lower.
How all that depression can coexist with happiness is harder to explain. Maybe Vermonters are more likely than other Americans to seek treatment for depression (the state has a better-than-average health care system), rather than, say, dealing with it by drinking too much.
Except it turns out that Vermont has one of the higher rates of consuming alcoholic beverages.
Whatever their flaws, these surveys rely on real polls, the kind that use random samples so everyone has an equal probability of being polled.
Not everything that calls itself a poll meets that standard. Take the latest “poll” on the website of the otherwise responsible Vermont Business Magazine. It asks readers to weigh in on whether the governor should “appoint a special prosecutor in the EB-5 case.”
The results are overwhelmingly in the affirmative. The results are also meaningless, because the “Vermontbiz Quick Poll” is not a poll. Respondents selected themselves, so it is not a probability sample.
Vermont Business Magazine Editor Tim McQuiston said he would be “shocked if people thought this was a scientific poll” that accurately reflected public opinion. But he also said maybe the magazine would start calling its monthly interactive question a “readership survey” instead of a poll, which is probably a good idea.
More prominent (and therefore more objectionable) was the pseudo-poll purporting to show that 19 percent of college students approved of using violence to prohibit offensive speech. These findings were cited in The Wall Street Journal and in a Washington Post column.
But they’re not valid. Respondents were not college students randomly selected. They were whoever clicked on an online message.
Even the best of polls can be misinterpreted. After the Las Vegas massacre renewed the gun control debate, some commentators celebrated and others lamented a recent Pew survey showing that more Americans support gun rights than stronger gun control.
Pew is a good polling firm, and that finding is significant. But the question was theoretical. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed large majorities in favor of specific gun control laws.
As it happens, WalletHub also measured states by how dependent they are on the gun industry, based on the financial and political impact of the industry as well as gun ownership and gun sales. Vermont scored as the 19th most dependent. Alaska was first and Rhode Island last.
According to the survey, 29 percent of Vermont households own firearms. That ranks 31st of the 50 states, Alaska again being first and Delaware last. Perhaps surprisingly, considering that it’s right next door, New Hampshire has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership – 14 percent. But New Hampshire is much less rural than Vermont, and gun ownership is far more prevalent in rural areas.
One other recent poll result deserves attention. It may make some Vermonters happier and some more disgruntled. The July column mentioned above cited a Gallup Poll finding that Vermont was the state whose citizens were most opposed to President Donald Trump.
No longer. A new Morning Consult Poll shows that Vermonters are still solidly anti-Trump, with 33 percent approving his job performance and 62 percent disapproving. But his numbers were slightly worse in Massachusetts (32 to 63) and Hawaii (31-64).
