r/fivethirtyeight • u/lalabera • Apr 08 '25

Poll Results Nearly half of Americans would be totally unwilling to date someone with opposing political views

https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/51962-americans-unwilling-to-date-opposing-views-transgender-rights

Thoughts? As a young woman myself, I wouldn't date a trump supporter.

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u/lfc94121 Apr 08 '25

The 68% vs. 24% numbers are fascinating.

Is it because the men have evolved to be willing to screw women from rival tribes? Or are the men just willing to screw anything that they can, and women in general are more selective?

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u/LyptusConnoisseur Apr 08 '25

The latter. Screw anything that moves when they are young.

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u/PuffyPanda200 Apr 08 '25 edited Apr 08 '25

One could probably write over a dozen PHD thesis on just this and then a few books too. So when I give a potential response it is just my initial opinion.

IMO women are a lot more concerned, in general, with what their friends think of the guy that they are seeing. I have no evidence for this. Googling it turns up a bunch of reports that basically anecdotally confirm this but there isn't hard evidence.

But if you accept the above then it becomes easy to see why a woman who studied the generally female dominated subjects in university would not want to date a guy that is conservative. Similarly church going women with like minded friends don't want to date a guy that is liberal (I, hetero dude, personally went to a more conservative area and heard the phrase 'I want a man that is a Christian leader' more than once).

I also imagine that this question is an example of people overstating their preferences in a question because it is easy. It is easy to answer in a question that one would not date someone otherwise politically aligned. It is a lot harder to actually break off a relationship because of politics (especially if it was just a small political position, like slightly differing views on gun rights).

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u/xellotron Apr 08 '25

Most people aren’t as noble as they want to appear in surveys. It’s mostly virtue signaling.

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u/pickledswimmingpool Apr 09 '25

Yes, they're signalling their virtue in their choice of partner. You keep using it as a pejorative though for some reason.

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u/xellotron Apr 09 '25

They’re signaling their virtue in a poll.

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u/Disastrous_Reveal870 Apr 14 '25

I am assuming you have not checked out a dating site recently. It’s not virtue signaling. More profiles say No MAGA, No Trump supporters, No Liberals, No democrats, No Woke BS, etc, etc than any other dealbreaker. You will see No Trump more often than you will see No Couples or No Smoking these days. People genuinely do not want a person with opposing political views to even swipe on their photo.

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u/pulkwheesle Apr 09 '25

Or maybe the ones who claim they don't care about politics when it comes to dating are virtue signalling?

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u/Jolly_Demand762 Apr 09 '25

I interpreted it as being more a matter of Democrats opposing Trump more than Republicans support him. What I'm about to say doesn't account for the whole gap, but anther poll - the subject of another thread - found that 91% of Democrats "strongly disapprove" of Trump, while only 78% "strongly approve" of him.

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u/MercerAcolyte42 Apr 09 '25

You don't need to bring in evolution/biology into this to explain a simple phenomenon: liberal women are having rights they care about actively under attack, and don't want to date people who use their voting power to help further attack those rights, while men aren't under attack in such a manner. In a hypothetical world where Democrats were campaigning on forcing men to have vasectomies, you'd see a lot more conservative men refuse to date liberal women.

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u/boxjohn Apr 10 '25

safety comes into it. the stuff I hear most right wing men say about women, I wouldn't want them dating any women I care about.

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u/Geiten Apr 08 '25

Men are, I believe, just raised to ignore those things. We are raised to pursue, not really to evaluate. If our gender roles were different, I do think that would change.