The number of optimists has been quite volatile in 2014, going from 26% to 35% earlier in the year, then back to 30% in November before ending up at 36% in December.
I'd moan about how unbearably smug this must make all those stupid optimists, but my time here is limited and it'd probably only slash a couple more months off my life.
If anyone deserves to die young, it's optimists.
Optimists go outside and get a suntan, but pessimists stay indoors and avoid getting cancer.
The fact that – so far – no one has stormed out and pulled the plug on the four-party coalition is proof, optimists argue, that nobody really wants to pull the delicate edifice of devolution down.
Optimists see a supermarket prawn sandwich and think it looks delicious.
Optimists go skydiving to experience a life-affirming surge of adrenaline, but pessimists steer clear because they know they'll plummet headfirst into a flock of geese, and then their canopy won't open, and then their plane will crash-land and explode right on top of their shattered almost-corpse.
Optimists are more active, they say, and have better body mass indexes.
For optimists, the arrival of internet technology and social networking signalled an opportunity to counter the right's extremist politics: an arena through which the bonds that bridge communities opposed to rightwing doctrine could be strengthened.
Party optimists, of whom there are many, say they were on 13% after Charles Kennedy was forced out in January 2006 and that the next election is nearly five years away.
If, as expected, Brexit causes the loss of many jobs (the optimists predict one million, the pessimists three), tens of thousands of Italians will return home.
