Parties and Fears of the Paranormal

Christopher Ingraham writes at The Washington Post:

The Chapman University Survey on American Fears, a comprehensive study of the fears, phobias and irrational beliefs of the American people, was just released this week and contains an interesting section on belief in the paranormal. The results are drawn from a nationally-representative sample of 2,500 American adults.

...

The Chapman authors provided me with breakdowns by party affiliation. In general, Democrats were slightly and in some cases significantly more likely than Republicans to believe in paranormal phenomena: 75.6 percent of Democrats agreed that positive thoughts could influence the physical world, compared to 68.6 percent of Republicans.

Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans to believe in fortune telling, and about twice as likely to believe in astrology.

On the other hand, Republicans were significantly more likely to say that Satan causes most evil in the world, a reflection of the higher degree of religiosity in the Republican party.

There were no significant partisan differences on belief in Atlantis, UFOs or Bigfoot.