Are Republicans happier than Democrats?

For what it's worth, a new poll suggests Republicans by and large are happier in their lives than Democrats.

Jennifer Harper reports in the Washington Times:

“Republicans have higher levels of well-being than do Democrats,” says a huge Gallup health survey of 405,000 U.S. adults that tallies a half-dozen “well-being” indexes that include physical and emotional health, positive behaviors and workplace perceptions. Even the pollster acknowledges that religion could have something to do with it.

“Republicans enjoy at least modestly higher scores than Democrats on five of the six sub-indexes. Democrats score slightly higher on the ‘life evaluation’ index. This difference could reflect the political impact of having a Democrat in the White House,” says the three-month survey, which was conducted from Jan. 2 to March 31, 2011, but just released Friday.

“Political identification in the United States today is highly intertwined with many aspects of American social and economic life … Republicans have the highest well-being, above and beyond what would be explained by differences in well-being by demographics,” the survey concludes.

“Why this is the case is not known for sure, although one possibility may relate to religion; Republicans are more religious in general than independents or Democrats, and Gallup has shown in previous analyses that religiosity has a significantly positive relationship to well-being.”