Mar 09, 2025 Pets and Politics
About fifty years ago, a research study found that men with dogs were more successful in persuading women to go on dates than men without dogs. The presence of a dog seemed to signal good character. Thirty years later, another study concluded that pets act as social catalysts, making pet owners significantly more likely to engage with people in their neighborhoods than non-pet owners.
Politicians have also recognized that pets can convey trustworthiness. Research suggests that a photograph of a politician with their pet dog can boost their vote count by an extra percentage point or two. This may explain why over 90% of U.S. presidents have had pets in the White House, with Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Trump, during his first term, being the exceptions.
In the 2021 American Housing Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, only 49.6% of U.S. households reported owning pets. Among those households with pets, 38.1% had dogs and 21.9% had cats.
Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, has extensively studied dogs and the bond between humans and animals. In a post from 2019, he examined pet ownership preferences and their potential connection to voting behavior.
Coren’s analysis began with a 2018 report from the American Veterinary Medical Association, which outlined pet ownership statistics across the forty-eight states in the continental United States. The substantial variations in pet ownership rates from state to state caught his attention. For instance, 72% of households in Wyoming had pets compared to only 45% of households in Rhode Island.
Similar disparities were evident in dog and cat ownership rates. Idaho had the highest percentage of dog ownership, with 58% of households owning dogs, whereas New Hampshire had the lowest, at just 24%. Regarding cat ownership, Vermont led with 45% of households owning cats, while Rhode Island again had the lowest rate, at 17%. Coren then analyzed voting patterns in the presidential elections from 2004 to 2016. He found that the ten states with the highest rates of dog ownership predominantly supported Republican candidates. In contrast, the ten states with the lowest rates of dog ownership tended to vote for Democrats.
A few years later, three psychologists from York University in Canada revisited the pet preferences of conservatives and liberals. After controlling for relevant demographic factors that could have influenced the results, they concluded that “based on a large sample, we found that greater conservatism predicts a lower liking for cats and a stronger preference for dogs.”[1]
Surveys show that very few people are willing to express a dislike for dogs—only 4% of a US survey sample in the 1970s reported disliking them. In contrast, 28% of the same sample said they disliked or strongly disliked cats. A study by York University revealed that while liberals tended to support Democrats, they also favored dogs over cats, although their preference was not as strong as that of Republicans.
In 2020, Joe Biden expressed a desire to unite a divided nation, including plans to add a pet cat to the two dogs he intended to bring to the White House. However, his attempt to bridge the partisan divide was ‘A Bridge Too Far.’ Uniting dog and cat lovers, regardless of political affiliations, is no simple task. For instance, the organizers of weekend conferences for dog and cat breeders at Tufts Cummings Veterinary School were strongly advised to set up separate lunchrooms for the two groups of attendees!
[1] Ivanski, C., Lo, R. F., & Mar, R. A. (2021). Pets and Politics: Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Preferences for Cats Versus Dogs? Collabra: Psychology, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.28391
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