Partisan voters will be happier whenever a member of their party controls political office regardless of the policies; ideologues are happier when the politicians in power, regardless of party affiliation, enact their policies; those who hold extreme political views report higher levels of happiness

Jackson, Jeremy, Happy Partisans and Ideologues: State versus National (March 27, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3145282

Abstract: The political party of elected officials can affect the happiness of the voting public through several different channels. Partisan voters will be happier whenever a member of their party controls political office regardless of the policies implemented. Ideologues are happier when the politicians in power, regardless of party affiliation, enact policies closer to those that they prefer. Using data from the Generalized Social Survey the effect of party affiliation of national and state politicians on happiness is estimated. Political ideology scores are also gathered allowing the effect of ideology and its match with respondent preferences to be estimated. It is hypothesized that state political affiliations and ideology scores should have a greater impact on citizen happiness due to results from the literature on Tiebout sorting. However, this is not the case. Presidential party affiliation and ideology have a much greater impact on happiness than national legislative affiliation/ideology or gubernatorial and state legislative affiliation/ideology. These results suggest that identity politics appear to have the greatest effect on happiness.

Keywords: Happiness, Partisanship, Ideology, Party Politics
JEL Classification: D7, I31