Sunny Fourth of July Parades make Republicans

The experts at Harvard say so (or at least, published a paper on it), so it must be true, right? Thank goodness we took our granddaughter to several over the years, including this one from 2007, where she’s pictured with our Congressman, Lamar Smith:

The Harvard News and Views published a press release and a couple of news agencies picked up on it,  as of the time of this writing: Fox News,  Jim Galloway’s blog in the  Atlantic Journal and a website with the unlikely name of “Weasel Zippers.”

Here’s the Harvard News and Views  summary of the findings by the researchers:

Key conclusions in the paper include:
• Fourth of July celebrations have a significant impact upon people’s political preferences;
• Attending one Fourth of July before age 18 increases the likelihood of identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent and voting for the Republican candidate by 4 percent. It also increases voter turnout by 0.9 percent and boosts political campaign contributions by 3 percent.

The problem with the research is that the authors count all 4th of July days without rain as days that a child could have gone to a 4th of July parade. I remember one or two parades as a child, but remember Independence Day as a day for fishing and barbeques at the lake!  Maybe — instead of limiting the influence to parades, the researches might just look into celebrations of any kind.

Wonder what the effect will be on Roni, since we took her to another parade that day where she got soaked? (But I bought her ice cream at the Dairy Queen while we waited for G-Dad to finish the parade and get the truck.)