Reader RT sends this new poll showing the unhappiest places in the US by some measure or other. West Virginia is the unhappiest:
West Virginia residents’ well-being was the worst of all states. It scored last in three of the six categories: life evaluation, emotional health and physical health. The answers of West Virginians to questions in the physical health category were particularly alarming. It was the only state where more than 30% of residents were told that they had high cholesterol. In addition, nearly 40% of respondents were told they have high blood pressure, also the highest of all states. Some 31.4% of respondents indicated that they smoked, the highest percentage of all states. The state had the second-lowest median income in the U.S., and a very high proportion reported not being able to afford food or medicine. West Virginians had the second-worst life expectancy at birth in the country
I’ll be the first to note that these “bestest/worstest by some measurement” stories are generally bullshit, but if you buy this one, most of the states on this list are red states.
Princess Leia
I am sure it is all due to the rash of disappearing condiments.
Syrbal
I’ve come to the conclusion that one reason the Red States stay red is because the citizens are so accustomed to having things be lousy that they don’t even believe it can be any different. They think the whole progressive line about change is a fairy tale and reject it to prove they are real grown ups accepting their fate.
AnonPhenom
Wooohooo, Mississippi still #1!
Violet
Ohio and Indiana are on the list–otherwise it’s all red states. Maybe the portions of those states that are red pushed them across the line.
chopper
they’re all red states except Ohio.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Syrbal: They think the whole progressive line about change is a fairy tale and reject it to prove they are real grown ups accepting their fate.
Could be, or the Redoublechins have just successfully sold the idea that their unhappiness is all the fault of liberals / feminazis / non-whites.
Zifnab
@chopper: It’s hard to argue that a state with a Republican Governor and bright-red state legislature is “blue”.
That said, I’m always curious about the chicken-and-egg question here. Are miserable people prone to voting Republican. Or are Republican-leaning states just more prone to be miserable.
pamelabrown53
Once you get outside any town in West, by gosh, Virginia you see “Deliverance”.
rda909
@Violet: Indiana is considered a “red state.” Certainly was the last election, and Ohio is more purple I’d say, with the fairly strong union presence there being the main factor a Democrat ever wins a statewide election, otherwise Ohio is largely Republican. So there isn’t a single true-blue Blue State in there in my opinion.
LittlePig
Or are Republican-leaning states just more prone to be miserable
The common denominator is the resistance to change. Eat the same ol’ greasy food, watch the TV, guzzle beer etc. etc. Vote to keep the guns in and Others (blacks, gays, uppity women, etc. etc) out. They want things to stand still so they can feel secure.
Boy did Alvin Toffler call it or what?
Tom
Yep;the Appalachian part of Ohio! Or as it is beter known; Western West Virginia.
Violet
@rda909: Yeah, I was thinking of southern states when I said that about Indiana. Isn’t there kind of a north-south divide in Indiana where south is more like the redneck south?
quannlace
Hmmm, maybe this is why Cole is so cranky.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab:
I think it’s a vicious circle. Note, though, that it’s not Red States in general that do badly. It’s Greater Appalachia rather than the far West.
El Tiburon
This is obvious on its face. Look at Cole. He buries his depression in animals and booze. Take away his penis and he is the crazy, cat-lady at the end of the street.
Good thing he can’t remember where he put the bullets…
scav
@Violet: Parts of the North I’ve been to were Red enough to make me edgy. Not full on nervous but certain curb your speech tenderhooks, here be minefields.
Napoleon
@Violet:
I think that even pretty far north in Indiana its still basically the south, unlike Ohio that is roughly 3 layers, the northern tier (Clev/Akr/Tol/Y-town) that shares a lot with the coastal north, the middle (C-bus) which is more moderate and the south (Cincy) which is culturally really part of the south.
Kip the Wonder Rat
@Violet: Indiana is blue?
dedc79
West Virginia also has the highest ratio of pets per resident, but that number may have been skewed by a single respondent….
Higgs Boson's Mate
I blame mountaintop removal.
srv
Look at it this way, they’ll be dying off a lot quicker and leaving more SS and Obamacare for the rest of us.
If we could just get rid of their Emergency Rooms.
Maude
The people of WV are unhappy because northerners call them hillbillies.
vagabundoloco
@Syrbal:
Bingo.
That’s also why they’re so bitter and nasty to the fellow poor and struggling.
What so many lefties don’t get – people in bitter circumstances aren’t automatically going to vote altruistically or in a way that might logically serve their own self-interests and the interests of most other people in their same boat. A lot of these people are twisted. They take refuge in the kind of politics that caters to their own hate and hopelessness dreaming up revenge fantasies against scapegoats (minorities, the even poorer, foreigners, LIEberals, etc.)
Basically, they clinging to their guns and their (fundamentalist) religion (of apocalyptic vengeance).
sam
Sad historical fact:
Highest state death rate, Vietnam War: West Virginia–84.1. (The national average death rate for males in 1970 was 58.9 per 100,000).
Vietnam War Statistics
Redleg
And that’s why so many Red-Staters hate the Ni-clang.
Chris
Interesting. I remember polls saying that conservatives were overall happier than liberals, and I thought that made sense too – vindication of the “ignorance is bliss” theory of obliviousness for the sake of happiness.
Guess not.
Cermet
Yeah, get John Cole out of WV and I’m sure it would move up a notch. His accident rate alone could drop a blue state a a few critical points on that scale.
Considering WV is blue except for voting for Ni*clang* … I mean for anyone who is white, male and stupid, can’t really say it is being only red; mostly just being stupid, which mostly is a thug way of thinking.
Napoleon
@Chris:
Maybe they are happy but the moderates and liberals that are stuck in those states are completly miserable.
Yutsano
OT: Sanford vs Colbert could happen. I’m giddy.
greennotGreen
@Princess Leia: I’d laugh, but I live in Tennessee, so I don’t think I’m supposed to be happy.
WereBear
Don’t you feel sorry for ME, you pointy headed libtard syndrome.
ricky
Obviously you did not check out the sister study on “Hottest as Shown on TV Items” or you’d know purchases of Sticky Buddy and Lint Lizard do nothing to overcome general unhappiness in red states with above average Scots-Irish inbreeding.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
If it fits my world view, then of course I believe it.
pamelabrown53
@Maude: Dear Maude,
“the people of West Virginia are unhappy because northerners call them hillbillies”: I can’t say that isn’t a factor but when I lived in Huntington, WVA in the early 80’s, I saw a significant “holler population” that were so isolated and hence suspicious of outsiders that it’s hard to know how much the outside world actually permeates their closed society.
This would be a great thread for John Cole to participate…or Carnacki. My impressions are so old and anecdotal to be of much use.
Xantar
@Chris:
It’s possible that conservatives are happier than liberals when you control for other factors like health, education, and income. Of two people who have similar backgrounds, upbringing, and social classes, I can believe that the conservative might be more likely to be happy.
However, that’s not the comparison in West Virginia which is probably influenced a lot by poor health and economic factors.
glocksman
@Violet:
It’s more of a rural/urban (with racial undertones) divide.
There are towns in central Indiana where this lily white boy feels unwelcome simply because I’m not a local resident despite my Vanderburgh (SW Indiana) County ‘Lincoln’s Boyhood Home’ license plate.
I can only imagine what it’d be like if I were black.
Though there is a joke I heard a while back about Hoosier Democrats.
“Welcome to Indiana, where the Hoosier Democrats act like Republicans and real Democrats are suspect.”
As far as Obama winning IN back in 2008 goes, that was a fluke brought on by the shitty economy and GWB’s demonstrated incompetence.
Other than BHO, the only other Democrat to carry Indiana since the 1940’s was LBJ in 1964.
David Hunt
So no Texas, huh? We’ll see about that. I’m sure a few more years of Rick Perry as Governor can get us on that list!
The Moar You Know
Poverty has consequences.
vagabundoloco
@WereBear:
Yeah, pretty much that. It’s a case of “I suffer, and therefore out of spite and envy I wish to see everyone else suffer 10 times more.”
“We’ll see how high and mighty ya’ll are when we true American patriots of God lead our armed revolution and then Jesus comes back to send all you godless, big city, fancy pants types to hell!”
Xenos
@Violet: I don’t know much about Indiana, except that is where my ancestors went to from Tennessee because they were not willing to fight for the Confederacy. I don’t think it is a bunch of ex-southern Union Men that make Indiana so much like the South, maybe the result of waves of religiously fanatical emmigrants from Upstate NY’s burnt-over districts marked the culture – an unfortunate bit of convergent evolution.
Wag
My state (Colorado) rates #2 on the list, right behind hawaii, as the happiest place to live.
I credit the enormous number of fastastic microbreweries.
Joel
If you consider personal misfortune as a driving factor in support for socially regressive policies, then findings like this are not at all surprising. In other words, “Ivan’s Goat”.
Greg
@glocksman: It’s definitely an urban/rural thing. I lived in Louisville/Lexington for many years, and the locals felt right at home when they went to Chicago or Atlanta. But one hour into Eastern Kentucky was like a different planet. I hear the same about Tennessee from my friends and family in Nashville and Memphis.
Eric U.
I think poverty and unhappiness breeds republican voting mostly because the victims are stupid enough to fall for the republican tricks. Particularly the one that says that the government is the problem. Their lives are bad and they couldn’t bear it if their lives were worse.
If Democrats went full-on populist, they might have a chance with these people. Dems have gone to a “sensible middle” approach which just doesn’t appeal to a downtrodden coal miner in WV.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT but Dylan Ratigan is back with an absolutely brilliant idea.
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2013/03/20/putting-our-money-where-our-mouth-is/
ricky
@David Hunt:
Texans will always have enough guns to keep themselves happy.
Petorado
@Wag:
And a joyous Colorado Craft Beer Week to you too!
Matt McIrvin
The descriptions seem to be more about health and healthy behavior than happiness, though the two are probably connected. And it most likely all comes down to poverty, especially rural poverty; these states tend to be in the crescent sometimes called Greater Appalachia.
Speaking as a liberal blue-stater, I’m not inclined to gloat.
That said, poverty is not a good predictor of political conservatism; if anything it’s the reverse. It’s the old faintly paradoxical observation that poor people tend to vote Democratic but poor states tend to vote Republican; the most Republican people of all tend to be rich residents of poor states.
TriassicSands
Somebody in Mississippi must have paid someone a lot of money to “lose” the first position.
Mississippi
Lowest life expectancy
Lowest median income
2nd highest obesity rate
Highest diabetes rate
3rd lowest high school diploma rate
West Virginia
2nd lowest life expectancy
2nd lowest median income
HIghest obesity rate
HIghest high blood pressure rate
12 lowest high school diploma rate
It’s a real contest, but it’s hard to see how Mississippi doesn’t win this. Man they must have awarded a lot of points for “Most Magnolia Blossoms,” otherwise something is fishy.
Wait a minute. Maybe Cole’s residency tipped the scales for W.Va. It’s not that he’s unhappy, but quite the opposite. Lately, he’s been crowing about being the happiest person in the universe, so maybe every other West Virginian feels crappy by comparison.
WereBear
I wonder if Nanny State Resentment isn’t from experience with social services?
All that meddling, stuff like don’t feed the baby soda, get a car seat, stop beating the baby. It can breed defensiveness, because they weren’t raised that way, and they are still dependent on their relatives… Who weren’t raised that way either.
negative 1
I’m going to go ahead and crow a little for my own state, the Biggest Little State in the Nation, Rhode Island. Because the bottom 10 seems to be unhealthy, and with serious institutional poverty, whereas we’re #37 just by being miserable a^&holes. An actual quote from the same source article:
“Rhode Island also scored third from the bottom in terms of emotional health. For instance, just over 80% of people indicated that they smiled or laughed a lot the previous day, the fourth-lowest percentage of all states. Moreover, just over 90% of the population said they had been treated with respect during the previous day, the third-lowest percentage. Not all was bad, however. The physical health of the state’s residents was ranked ninth best of all states.”
Read more: America’s Happiest (and Most Miserable) States – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2013/02/28/americas-happiest-and-most-miserable-states/#ixzz2O6lTlbDF
Well, now I can honestly say I smiled a lot on this day.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, and I’ve heard that even in the South, the poor and working class whites tend to skew more Democratic than their middle class and rich brethren, though often not to the point of actually trending Democrat overall.
It’s also what I’ve found anecdotally among the white Southerners I knew in college (though “college” definitely puts a huge additional demographic spin on it). Those who came from poor backgrounds were Democrat, moderate-to-liberal, and perfectly unprejudiced. Those who came from middle class backgrounds were, well, stereotypical Southern Republicans.
The poorest states being the most conservative ones comes as no surprise; shitty ideologies produce shitty results.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
That probably has something to do with it. One of the saddest stories I ever heard on NPR was about a woman who had her toddler taken away for “failure to thrive” because it turned out she was withholding food from him whenever she felt he had misbehaved.
When the social workers told her what was going to happen, she rolled up her sleeves to show the burn marks her own parents had put there when they punished her as a child and said, “Where the fuck were you guys when this was happening to me? At least I never hit my baby.”
And the social workers didn’t really have a good answer. She was trying her best to do better than her parents had, but she was coming from such a huge deficit in understanding that her version of “doing better” was still abusive.
ericblair
@Eric U.:
The problem with a full-on populist approach is that you will have to work very, very hard to avoid it turning into “blame the darkies”, which is historically what has happened. It’s probably best to stay to practical matters (what exactly healthcare reform will do for you, and what better environmental policies will do for you) and leave all loaded ideological terms out of it.
Amir Khalid
@Chris:
Sorry, but there’s no such thing as a perfectly unprejudiced person. We were all born/raised/educated/employed in some particular milieu. We are all bound to share at least some of that milieu’s prejudices even if we learn to outgrow some of the rest.
artem1s
1. Hawaii
> Well-being index score: 71.1
> Life expectancy: 81.5 years (the highest)
> Obesity: 25.7% (20th lowest)
> Median household income: $61,821 (8th highest)
> Adult population with high school diploma or higher: 90.6% (10th highest)
don’t they have universal health coverage? But of course it must be an Obamanation, amiright?/snark
NotMax
Linked to this here some 3 weeks ago, and it had just about lost its new poll smell then.
Seanly
I’m surprised SC isn’t on the list. My wife & I lived there from ’05 until late ’11. We were miserable & most of the other people were miserable. This was in the Midlands which has the humidity of the Low Country without the coast or beauty. Maybe people in the Low Country & Upstate were happier & it balanced out the huge pit of despair in Columbia.
Idaho (my current home) is a red state and people in Boise seem pretty happy. Boise tends to be sorta quietly purple plus there’s a lot of outdoor activities & bike paths.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Sorry. “Didn’t hate nonwhite people, non-straight people or other people the right commonly considers unpersons; didn’t blame them for the economic crisis or for their problems in general; didn’t think they should be denied voting rights, public assistance or any of the other prerogatives of citizenship that they wanted for themselves.”
I suppose the word “perfect” is always misused if applied to a human being, come to think of it.
nellcote
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Glad to see him doing something useful with his life and influence.
Trollhattan
O/T but dear lord, torture fetishist John Yoo has opened his yap on this holy tenth anniversary of our liberation of Iraq.
Interestingly, Freidersdorf is first in line to hold his feet to the fire.
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Considering-Iraq-Another-View
askew
So my state of Minnesota is 3rd happiest considering how fucking awful our weather is that is impressive.
OT – did anyone else see Chuck Todd make a huge ass out of himself at the Bibi/Obama press conference? Everyone, including Bibi, was laughing at Chuck. Oy, so embarrassing.
the lost puppy
@Seanly: The upstate is more right-wing (think BJU) than either the Midlands or the Lowcountry — Baptist churches on every corner. Trust me, not a good sign.
Hill Dweller
@askew:The twitter machine is taking a dump on Todd. I figured he must have done something stupid in Israel.
Todd, like Tapper, is a thin-skinned careerist, who let’s his personal grievances color his reporting. He has gotten especially nasty in the last year or so.
Also too, Todd, Gregory and Scarborough are completely out of their depth.
Chris
@Trollhattan:
FTFY.
Out of all the Bush administration people, John Yoo will always be the one I find most repugnant. And in a field that prominently featured Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton and Bush himself, that’s really saying something.
But I’m sorry, it takes an especially diseased mind even by these standards to actually sit down and iron out all the little details about which of the many ways to savagely torture a person are more acceptable than others.
askew
@Hill Dweller:
He asked 4 questions to President Obama including why Obama failed to get Israeli/Palestine peace done in his first term and then a follow-up to Bibi. Basically, Obama called him out and said that the Israeli press knows how to ask 1 question, why can’t the U.S. press. And then everyone laughed at him. Then, Obama proceed to mock Chuck’s stupid question throughout his answer. Finally, Bibi piled on by mocking Chuck some more. It was a thing of beauty.
Andrea Mitchell tried to spin it as a jovial press conference instead of everyone laughing at Chuck.
Suffern ACE
@Trollhattan: WE-actually did not get much benefit from the Husseins being gone. the Husseins were nasty pieces of work, for sure. But WE, US, actually weren’t being harmed by them. So what difference does it make to US whether they are gone or not?
Now, this isn’t to argue that the only beneficiaries were the Iraqis. But sheesh.
Suffern ACE
@askew: Really. Is he trying to play the “Magic Negro Can’t Solve The Problems” to humble Obama, or was he going with the “Maybe I can get Obama to say something implying that Bibi is to blame and WHEEE. SCORE ONE, Dude. Lookitme daddy. I’m a majer playor” card.
What a douche.
Chris
@Suffern ACE:
In a cold Realist context, Saddam Hussein was exactly where he needed to be, as a buffer between the Saudis and our other allies in the Peninsula and their (and our) enemies to the north. Various members of the first Bush administration explained painstakingly again and again that while we wanted Iraq cut down to size, we did not want it so far gone that it no longer kept Iran and Syria in check. They also explained why going into Iraq would’ve cost much and gained little. And Saddam was much stronger in 1990/1991 when they were saying this than he was in 2002/2003.
Apparently, all those considerations were simply dropped when the powers that be decided that a war would be a good thing. Needless to say, not a single reporter felt it appropriate to ask “what’s changed and why do you feel that your own position from a decade ago is no longer relevant?”
Matt McIrvin
@Seanly: Yeah, the Western red states tend not to be such sad places: they’re not as poor. Idaho is actually poorer than most of them, though the area around Boise is relatively well-off. And I think the climate helps.
I spent a lot of time in and around Boise traveling on business in the years around 2000. It’s an underratedly nice place, on the whole. I remember that the Hewlett-Packard engineers could all afford giant houses because the real estate was so cheap.
askew
Here’s the video of Chuck Todd being an imbecile.
the lost puppy
Totally OT but the bitch-fight b/w Reince Priebus and Michael Steele is still ongoing
Maude
@pamelabrown53:
Get a sense of humor. It was a joke.
AnonPhenom
Right, don’t know from a statisical perspective how many outliers it takes to call into question the methodology of the survey … But how, in one year does:
North Dakota go from #2 to #19 or
Alaska go from #4 to #31 or
Kansas go from # 7 to #17 or
Delaware from #47 to #26 ?
I gotta think if your groupings aren’t a little tighter than that, it should raise a few red flags.
The Other Chuck
♫♫♫ Almost heaven, except for forty nine other states, West Virginia ♫♫♫
sparrow
@Syrbal: As a former red stater, “ah, no.” It’s tribalism. Or as my dear Greek says “It’s not shit, my grandmother made it”
AHH onna Droid
[email protected]Eric U.: why would a commie vote gop?
Visceral
@Syrbal:
I vote for this. King Coal has had them by the balls for generations and they don’t really have anything else to offer. Appalachia was backward even when the lowland South still had slaves. The New Deal was pretty much the first time anyone came in and did stuff.
The Other Bob
Yay, Michigan doesn’t suck on one list. Finally.
AnonPhenom
@Visceral:
True, however isn’t this just a variation on this:
Yutsano
@Matt McIrvin: My very first year of college was at Boise State University. It was actually a lovely little city (this was before the big tech boom there) and surprisingly inhabitable for a queer Jewish boy still working on the sexuality thing. I’ve contemplated moving back there but I’m addicted to Seattle.
Bob h
WV does have the highest Federal reimbursement rate in the nation, but that does not assuage their pain..