ABC News(NEW YORK) — A day of celebration for Donald Trump’s supporters has another impact on his critics: for them, the inauguration brings stress.
Stress soars, unsurprisingly, among Americans who preferred Hillary Clinton for the presidency: 65 percent of them in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say Trump’s election has increased their stress above its usual level. Thirty-nine percent report “a great deal” more stress.
Among Trump supporters, by contrast, a mere 4 percent report extra stress caused by his attaining the presidency. To the contrary, 31 percent in this group say the opposite — that Trump’s election has decreased their usual stress.
Very conservative Americans are similarly likely to report stress reduction as a result of Trump’s election; 34 percent do so, as do 25 percent of Republicans in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.
Overall, 35 percent of Americans report additional stress related to the election, 12 percent report less stress and 52 percent say it hasn’t caused any change from their usual stress levels.
Additional stress stemming from Trump’s election is up in some groups far more than it’s down in others. It reaches 62 percent among Democrats, 58 percent among liberals — and, putting them together, 73 percent among liberal Democrats. Forty-four percent in this group report a great deal of extra stress.
Stress also is notably high among Hispanics, 54 percent of whom report extra stress from Trump’s election, compared with 38 percent of blacks and 29 percent of whites.
It’s 54 percent among urban women vs. 18 percent among rural men. And there’s a similar division among two key groups in the November election: Fifty percent of college-educated white women report extra stress from Trump’s election. Just 16 percent of non-college white men say the same.
There’s a substantial gap between women (41 percent report extra stress as a result of Trump’s election) and men (28 percent) overall. That could reflect the gender gap in election preferences — or greater willingness among women to report stress.
Regardless, stress itself isn’t a blanket negative. While it’s linked to health and emotional problems, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control notes, “Sometimes stress can be good. It can help you develop skills needed to manage potentially threatening situations.”
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Jan. 12-15, 2017, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,005 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
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