To cleanse the palate. Alternate headline for “Walking Dead” fans: “Rick Grimes, Republican.”

No one’s the least bit surprised about this, yes?

The staff of FiveThirtyEight had fun yesterday batting around theories to explain the partisan gap but you can easily fill in the blanks yourself. Most obviously, Republicans trend rural and Democrats trend urban and city centers aren’t the place to be in the middle of an apocalyptic shinolastorm. There’s too much chaos and too much competition for resources once the power goes out, the hospitals go down, and the grocery store shelves are emptied. If you’re out in the sticks, odds are you have back-up power, food stashed away, and maybe a gun or two on hand because you’ve already had to consider fending for yourself in a minor emergency. Which probably explains why, when asked if they’d stay close to home during the apocalypse or evacuate and seek shelter elsewhere, Republicans split 68/32 versus 57/43 for Democrats. If you don’t like the geographic explanation, though, you can always opt for something more philosophical. Conservatism preaches independence and self-sufficiency and liberalism preaches dependence and communitarianism, so go figure that conservatives might be more comfortable in an “every man for himself” situation.

Here’s an interesting pair of answers drilling down on partisan differences. When people are asked how long they think they could survive a natural disaster (not an apocalyptic one, just your garden-variety hurricane or quake, etc) that knocked out their utilities without needing outside help, Republicans are much more confident that they could last a week than Democrats are. Top line here is “less than one day,” then “a few days,” then “almost a week,” then “a week or more”:

Fewer than 50 percent of Democrats think they could survive without help for more than a few days. Among Republicans, 68 percent say so. When you tweak that question so that it asks how long they think they could survive the honest-to-goodness apocalypse, the gap shrinks — but it’s still there:

Fifty-four percent of Dems say they could last more than a few days but just 40 percent think they’d last at least a week. Sixty-six percent of Republicans think they’d last a few days, with a majority of 51 percent hopeful that they’d make it a week. Interestingly, the numbers among independents are very close to Republicans’, suggesting that the partisan difference is less about GOPers being overconfident than Democrats feeling especially skeptical about their own ability to survive. Equally interesting, Republicans are really no more likely to say they have a survival plan ready to go if need be than Democrats are: The former split 13/87 on having a plan while the latter split 11/89. There’s virtually no preparedness gap to explain the confidence gap.

One more table, just for fun:

“Disease” isn’t an option here for whatever bizarre reason. Anyway, what’s the bigger news? That two percent of the public sees a “Walking Dead” end to civilization as within the realm of possibility or that 16 percent (including 27 percent of Democrats) thinks climate change could trigger the farking apocalypse? The most common global-warming disaster scenario for the U.S., I thought, was that the oceans slowly rise, forcing residents to move inland as coastal cities become unsustainable, and that access to resources becomes more unpredictable as world powers fight it out over a diminishing supply. That’s not “apocalyptic” the way nuclear war is, unless you think the big climate-change resource grab will lead nuclear states into confrontation. Makes me wonder how many people who answered “climate change” here have something concrete in mind or are simply reacting to endless left-wing bleating. Surely something that generates this much hand-wringing among Democrats must be apocalyptic, right?

Oh, by the way, when you ask people whether they expect the apocalypse to happen in their lifetime, the group with the highest number answering “very unlikely” is Republicans at 42 percent. (37 percent of Democrats say the same.) Not a result you’d expect if you buy the media portrait of righties as a bunch of paranoid preppers just waiting for the lights to go out. Exit question via FiveThirtyEight: Given that Republicans skew old and Democrats skew young, isn’t it less likely that Republicans would survive for a long time during the apocalypse? Young liberals may not have guns but they can run without trouble and most of them don’t need meds. Who knows? A month or two after the zombie outbreak begins, as well-armed conservative oldies keel over from fatigue, starvation, and untreated medical conditions, the U.S. may be bluer than ever. Long live Secretary-General Obama, first leader of the new People’s Republic of North America!