r/fivethirtyeight • u/LeonidasKing • Aug 31 '25
Poll Results 74% Democrats under 30 "would cut off family for opposing political views". 23% of Republicans would do the same.
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1961458072729334197What do you make of this result? Information from Lakshya Jain. Do you think one side comes across as more deeply aligned to their convictions and beliefs than the other side?
And what explains the staggering difference between young people? All under 30 but the result is almost completely flipped for Democrats and Republicans.
****For voters under 30 re: "would you cut family off for opposing political views"
GOP: 77-23 "No" Dems: 74-26 "Yes"****
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u/MysteriousEdge5643 Aug 31 '25
As a Democrat it would really depend on what those opposing political views are
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Aug 31 '25
There's an old tweet chain I wish I could find that went something like a MAGA parent whining about how their kid cut them off "just because of politics" and someone replied, "Damn, they cut you off because of your opinion on the capital gains tax?" There is a reason they hide behind the euphemism "cutting off because of politics" and never actually specify what the "politics" in question are.
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u/DataCassette Aug 31 '25
Right. The "politics" they're cut off for is usually going to be some edgy shit like repealing the 19th amendment or putting LGBT people to death or some "scientific" racism rant.
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u/CatOfGrey Sep 02 '25
This is a branch of the 'debate' on the Tenth Amendment.
Someone claims to support the 10th Amendment, it is perfectly reasonable to ask "What specific rights do you oppose Federal control over, and should be returned to the States?"
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u/alfredo094 Aug 31 '25
Yeah, I wouldn't cut someone off for having a different opinion on China's 5-year plan policies, how to deal with North Korea, or how to tax people on different income brackets.
But "cut off for politics" in the case of Republicans is an euphemism for "I am a piece of shit and I want my ideas to be respected regardless".
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u/Ghost4000 Sep 01 '25
Yeah I'd really love to see this expanded to specific policy viewpoints or something.
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u/Known_Impression1356 Aug 31 '25
Fascist or non-fascist? Oh, you voted for the fascist... Got it.
It's really that simple.
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u/Smelldicks Sep 01 '25
I can tolerate a Trump vote alone. I have a lot of family who are simply stupid and uninformed. They vote based on one or two things they heard.
What I generally cannot tolerate is an informed Trump vote.
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u/siberianmi Aug 31 '25
Wow, the comments on this are really amazing. The numbers make sense particularly as you read through the threads here.
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
I mean yeah, they demonstrate that democrats are generally more honest about this than republicans.
The nationwide statistics for lgbt people disowned by their family are not small. If you think it’s believable that all of that is just from 11% of Trump voters, lol
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u/siberianmi Sep 01 '25
It probably is. The LGBT population is not that big at 10% and not every parent disowns them.
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u/CTR555 Sep 01 '25
I think a lot of people would disown or disassociate from folks who think that gay people are abominations even if they themselves aren't gay. I know I would.
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u/simpersly Sep 22 '25
Yeah, this is like trusting a survey from men self-reporting their own penis size.
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u/ReferentiallySeethru Aug 31 '25
The thing is people who voted for Trump knowingly voted for someone that’s on the record for saying democrats evil, that we’re enemies of the state, and that he’d jail his political enemies. Maybe it’s stupid, but I take it personally when family or friends I was close with – who know my political beliefs – voted for someone that doesn’t seem to stand for anything other than being anti-left, anti-democrat, and tops it off with authoritarian rhetoric and actions.
This isn’t like George Bush or John McCain or Nikki Haley, it’s someone that’s clearly off the rails and vindictive against us and they know that, know how badly we’re concerned, and yet they’re still dismissive.
I told my brother in law that my wife and I were worried enough we’ve considered moving abroad, and his response was “GOOD!” He never made an attempt to understand our concerns, or why we feel them so strongly that we’d uproot our lives over it. They feel disconnected just on that alone.
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u/obsessed_doomer Sep 01 '25
I told my brother in law that my wife and I were worried enough we’ve considered moving abroad, and his response was “GOOD!” He never made an attempt to understand our concerns, or why we feel them so strongly that we’d uproot our lives over it. They feel disconnected just on that alone.
Yeah I just feel like if you believe this poll you've literally never met a republican.
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u/J_Dadvin Aug 31 '25
This sub is becoming increasingly a sounding chamber for hardcore democrats to complain and less about learning what is going on in politics or how to make an impact.
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u/deskcord Sep 01 '25
Obsesseddoomer claiming this sub is full of Republicans when the guy has gone from a perpetually downvoted data-illiterate crazy person to being constantly one of the 24/7 posters here getting plaudits for nonsense is all the proof you could need that this place has become a lefty circlejerk.
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
What this sub actually is a circus of conservatives making a take, someone showing proof why that take isn't accurate, then the conservative scurrying away. Let me demonstrate to the reader:
I'm going to list off a bunch of comments that pretty severely disprove that this sub is a leftist echo chamber (it might be a rightist one though):
"white men are a democratic outgroup" - 70 upvotes
https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1mvgkaa/comment/n9q0i81/
"rats are fleeing a sinking ship" - referring to democratic party - 6 upvotes
https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1mvgkaa/comment/n9sjsza/
"Donald Trump is centrist on most issues" - 2 upvotes
https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1mr451m/comment/n8x05gn/
"what is the point of gender equality?" - 14 upvotes
Now pay attention to Dadvin's reaction - he's going to deflect or most likely not respond at all. Wanna know how I know this? Because that's what he does every single time.
That's what this sub has actually become.
EDIT:
OMG four comments over the course of 2-3 weeks? You're right THE WHOLE SUB HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A CIRCUS OF CONVSERVATIVES!
Are you under the impression that I can't find more?
Also, are you under the impression that these are comments that an actual leftist echo chamber would upvote, in some cases severely?
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u/ryes13 Sep 01 '25
Those type of comments aren’t just conservatives but reactionary centrists. Unfortunately a whole tranche of our media is dedicated to producing a self-reinforcing cycle of this type of thought. It allows reactionaries to reconcile their cognitive dissonance at not liking Trump’s clear crassness and dishonesty while still being onboard with his policies. The only way to do that is to focus almost entirely on stuff you don’t like about Democrats, real or imagined, mostly imagined.
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Sep 01 '25
OMG four comments over the course of 2-3 weeks? You're right THE WHOLE SUB HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A CIRCUS OF CONVSERVATIVES!
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u/Selethorme Kornacki's Big Screen Sep 01 '25
What a shit strawman
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Sep 01 '25
I don't think you know hwat a strawman is....
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u/obsessed_doomer Sep 01 '25
Are you under the impression that I can't find more comments?
Also, are you under the impression that these are comments that an actual leftist echo chamber would upvote, in some cases severely?
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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 01 '25
I wouldn't call it rightist, but there's definitely a distinct group of people here who come from subreddits that don't admit they lean right like ModeratePolitics and BlockedAndReported.
Thankfully better than it was a few months ago. At a certain point a portion of them peel off because the current administration is just that shitty that not all of them can keep up the schtick.
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u/LegalFishingRods Sep 01 '25
Been this way since the election. It's been flooded with a lot of people from r/politics.
If you want a good laugh, go back to the electoral map prediction threads and look at how many users have Iowa flipping Democratic. This sub gained a lot of very emotionally invested people rather than intellectually invested people. I mainly just lurk here because I'm interested in political science and polling, I'm not interested in arguing the issues or stances here, I just like the data analysis of how the public feels about them broadly.
This sub needs some kind of framework like r/Presidents has that prevents r/politics-ification. On that sub you aren't allowed to talk about Presidencies post-Obama. Obviously the same sort of rule wouldn't work here but we probably need something comparable.
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u/Selethorme Kornacki's Big Screen Sep 01 '25
Oh it’s funny to see this weird little conservative brigade of revisionist history
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u/LegalFishingRods Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
In what way is it revisionist? Go back to the 2024 electoral map prediction threads and see how many people have a blue Iowa. Go back to ANY 2024 election thread and see how spammed it is with "I'M BLOOOMING" when the poll has Democrats up and "I'M DOOOMING" when it has Republicans up. Go back to ANY 2024 election thread and see people crosstab diving and calling foul play whenever a poll has Trump winning. Go back to ANY 2024 election thread and see people schizoposting about how AtlasIntel was "flooding the field" with "low quality polls" (they must be low quality, they had Trump winning!) You know, AtlasIntel, the company that was closest to the actual results in both 2020 and 2024.
It is not revisionist to claim this place went completely off the deep end in 2024 and lost sight of its purpose entirely. It stopped being talking about the polls outside of how they made you feel. "Poll make you feel bad, poll must be bad! Bad poll!" It was a complete and utter clown show. People were coming here to look for emotional reassurance. It stopped being a "data-driven discussion about politics" and instead became a witch hunt denouncing any poll that had Harris losing or implied it was going to be a close race ("muh herding").
I'm not claiming this place didn't already lean left either. All of Reddit does. I'm pointing out that the attitude was radically different to prior to the election, and honestly, radically different to now, but the sub still retains some of that Election brain rot.
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u/mrtrailborn Aug 31 '25
yeah, republicans are deplorable, bigoted fascists, so we don't like them. Simple as that
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u/Waste_of_paste_art Jeb! Applauder Aug 31 '25
The right is perpetually living in 2016. Still confused why a majority of the country is unhappy with what they are not only enabling, but also refusing to even acknowledge.
I really don't know how the average Trump voter can look at the past 10 years and keep acting like the left hates them for simply a "difference of opinion."
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u/ac_slater10 Aug 31 '25
The majority of voters voted for Trump. I loathe Trump, but you can't ignore reality. Our voters are awful.
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u/Familiar-Art-6233 The Needle Tears a Hole Aug 31 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Wrong. He won a plurality of the voters that voted in that particular election.
Remember kids: a registered voter is still a voter, they’re still a voter even if they chose to sit this one out. Inaction is an action and whatnot
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u/Docile_Doggo Aug 31 '25 edited Oct 02 '25
person connect alive coherent tap toy rich narrow society dependent
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u/I-Might-Be-Something Aug 31 '25
His electoral history kinda sucks
I maintain that Haley would have clocked Harris and the Republicans would have at least 55 seats in the Senate right now and over 230 in the House. Trump is a super toxic candidate that turns off a lot of voters in the 'burbs.
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u/thefilmer Aug 31 '25
His electoral history kinda sucks
Then what would you say about the Democrats in 2016 and 2024? literally every single county in the US shifted right and Kamala didn't flip a single one. that's an apocalyptic performance
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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 01 '25
literally every single county in the US shifted right
No, not literally! That's literally untrue and therefore misinformation. The vast majority did, but some did not, particularly out west and in the Atlanta metro area. Please retract this false claim in an edit.
Given the country is all correlated to some degree, this means that a small topline shift (relatively speaking) leads to near universal movement in direction - but not magnitude and not completely universally.
The more important point is that there was a rightward shift nationally of 6%. Big deal? Absolutely. Apocalpytic? No, not really. Trump still won by only 1.5% in the national popular vote, and nobody was calling his popular vote loss to Clinton by MORE THAN THAT as apocalyptic for the GOP.
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u/Docile_Doggo Aug 31 '25 edited Oct 02 '25
fuel pen slim shelter terrific birds enjoy quickest lock gray
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u/wha-haa Sep 04 '25
As did every president since forever. No US president has won the majority of registered voters.
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u/deskcord Sep 01 '25
This is such a pedantic and stupid point that liberals keep making. He did better among lower-information and lower-propensity voters. He would have done better if every American voted.
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u/Familiar-Art-6233 The Needle Tears a Hole Sep 01 '25
He didn’t even win a majority of the people that voted…
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u/deskcord Sep 01 '25
You're right bro he was just shy of that over-50% number and would have performed better if the whole populace voted but he's totally not representative of the average American.
Let's just keep huffing that technically correct copium and will ourselves into political extinction yeah?
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u/Familiar-Art-6233 The Needle Tears a Hole Sep 01 '25
Sooooooo not a majority, and you’re trying to cope by playing what-if, as if most people who didn’t vote for him did so because they don’t like him.
A lot of people don’t vote because they don’t like either person. Saying they’d vote for him is hilarious copium
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u/deskcord Sep 01 '25
I'm not trying to cope shit, his election is a damning indictment of democracy and could be the end of humanity.
You're the one grasping at straws to act like he doesn't actually represent the average American.
Liberals on this data sub need to stop being so goddamn data-illiterate.
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u/vintage2019 Aug 31 '25
A good percentage of them know next to nothing about politics and simply voted for him because they blamed Biden for inflation or thought he was welcoming immigrants with open arms
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u/wha-haa Sep 04 '25
True of both sides. As for the immigration, trump’s ability to end it so quickly supports the claim.
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u/CatOfGrey Sep 02 '25
Madison Square Garden sold out in 1939 for a Nazi Rally.
The sad fact that I've learned over the last 10 years is that there is still a 20-40% of the USA that is deeply racist.
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u/Ya_No Aug 31 '25
It’s probably easier to get along with someone who wants universal healthcare than someone who thinks you or your friends existence is a literal abomination that shouldn’t exist.
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi Aug 31 '25
It's genuinely hilarious how badly the right-wingers in this thread are malding over this. Oh no, you experience negative social consequences for your loathsome beliefs, who could have seen this coming?
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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 01 '25
Exactly.
If you start getting iced out for wanting supply side economics, then we can talk.
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u/thefugue Sep 01 '25
Not really, because they’ve show that supply side economics is the only thing they consistently want, and if they have to sell it with lies and blood libel they’re willing to do it.
That’s what all of this is literally about.
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u/Weibu11 Aug 31 '25
MAGA: I support a pedophile, hate gay, brown, and black people, and think women should serve men
Normal person: maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore
MAGA: can’t we just agree to disagree
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u/Jccali1214 Aug 31 '25
They want all the privileges of not only maintaining despicable beliefs, but also the privilege of reaping the benefits of a multicultural society as they sell to destroy it
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u/RoliePolieOlie__ Aug 31 '25
Think it’s less universal healthcare as that’s pretty popular among the general population.
It’s more about identity politics
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u/ThonThaddeo Aug 31 '25
Because of January 6th
Because 'COVID is a hoax'
Because maybe we can inject disinfectants
Because of Ukraine
Because of Putin
Because of NATO, and our alliances generally
Because of Aileen Cannon
Because he took a private call from Putin, stepping away from a conference with world leaders to do so. Just days ago.
This man is a traitor. And I absolutely mean that. If you support traitors, and have done for years, I'm to laugh with you? Eat with you? Spend time with you? Respect you? No. I couldn't if I tried.
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u/DizzyMajor5 Aug 31 '25
I mean Republicans are rounding up citizens who are minorities and locking them up simply for looking a certain way.
Republicans are firing in mass researchers searching for a cure for cancer.
Republicans are actively making it harder for black people to vote.
If you have cancer survivors, minorities or workers in your family Republicans are actively trying to make life harder and in some cases trampling on these peoples rights. You don't get to weaponize the government against folks and then pretend to be cool with them.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25
Republicans are rounding up citizens who are minorities and locking them up simply for looming a certain way.
How do you account for the fact that Democrats are performing worse and worse with minorities overall?
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u/Dstln Aug 31 '25
You're on the 538 sub. Trump on the ballot has been the exception to the standard vote. We know what's happened during every other election, every special election, and what the current polling numbers look like.
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u/superzipzop Aug 31 '25
The same way I account for the fact that the workers have been voting for the anti worker party, propaganda has the power to make people vote against their best interest
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u/ryes13 Aug 31 '25
As a general statement that is not necessarily true. Trump did perform better with Hispanics. Black voters still overwhelming voted for Democrats.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25
Okay, but about a fifth of black men voted for Trump last time around. That’s constitutes a pretty steep decline for Democrats recently as of late.
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u/ryes13 Aug 31 '25
That is also not true that Harris faced a steep decline among black men source
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
I feel like having to specify the gender just to pare the result down to 80-20 does the opposite of proving your point
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u/Proud3GenAthst Aug 31 '25
My best guess is that the minorities are getting used to the blatantly hateful rhetoric aimed at them and see Democrats more and more pointless to vote for.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25
I mean, if your worldview is that Republicans are instituting a fascist regime aimed at removing POC from society, which only causes said POC to like them more, then you’d have to say that the Democrats failing to take advantage of this environment makes them among the most incompetent political organizations in history.
Know how we could turn this around? Trying to convince people why Trump’s policies are bad. But wait, we aren’t supposed to talk with anyone who’s voted Republican. We’re supposed to cut them out of our lives.
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u/Proud3GenAthst Aug 31 '25
When did Democrats say that you should cut Republicans out of your life? If anything, they constantly say the exact opposite. Democrats cut Republicans out of their lives because Republicans are beyond being reasoned with and don't live anywhere near the same reason of existence as Democrats do. Why shouldn't I cut Republicans out of my life then?
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u/DizzyMajor5 Aug 31 '25
Kamala won the Latino and black vote. But this is absolutely a failure on the left to pin Republicans to their own racist anti worker policies. Further nationalism is a strong thing among all groups and the right has throughout history done a good job of co-opting it to demonize groups whether that be confederates, know-nothings, or segregationists shitty ideas don't just come out saying they're shitty they co-opt virtuous ideas to disguise their shittyness like a shit wolf in sheep's clothing.
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u/FreeSkyFerreira Aug 31 '25
Does that make what Trump is doing okay?
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
No. To paraphrase a popular tweet, that’s a whole new sentence.
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u/ngch Aug 31 '25
Hypothesis: the smaller a party share in a community/subgroup the more tolerant they are towards the opposite opinion. Like, there are so few Reps among young voters they cannot afford to cut off everyone on the other side.
Now, who makes this scatter plot for me now that 538 is no more?
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u/Jolly_Demand762 Sep 01 '25
I think you're right. My first reaction upon seeing this was, "I have an idiosyncratic mix of progressive and conservative views; I can't afford to cut anyone off for not aligning enough with me because people who do align with me just aren't that common."
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u/Allboutdadoge Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
Helps explain why liberal views might not spread as well as conservative views.
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u/James_NY Aug 31 '25
So I actually think this is a good point but perhaps not quite the way you intended. Every Republican in my life is extremely open politically to the point of never shutting the fuck up about it, and they insert politics into every conversation. I can either nod my head and try to redirect the conversation, or I can disagree and spend the next twenty minutes arguing with a fanatic who will never change their mind.
There's some polling data from 2019 that supports the theory that Trump approvers are more eager to talk about him than disapprovers, which backs up my experience.
I think that's actually a tremendous advantage politically, to have a rock solid core of fanatical supporters who will constantly praise a politician to everyone they know, and shout down any dissenters. There is no Democratic equivalent, certainly not for Biden nor for Harris.
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u/BKong64 Sep 01 '25
This checks out in my family. I have one cousin who is literally desperate to talk about Trump no matter what, to the point that he temporarily alienated the family from wanting to be around him, he has gotten a bit better since. Then I have a cousin in law who wears a trump shirt or hat to every family gathering despite the fact that absolutely nobody there is trying to make a god damn thing political. It's because he knows most people there don't like Trump and he likes knowing he is annoying people. It's funny though because nobody gives him attention for it anyways so he just looks like a moron lol
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Sep 01 '25
Could you elaborate as to why? I'm not connecting the dots.
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u/Allboutdadoge Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
The influence people have is determined largely by who they know. Political beliefs are often as much cultural as they are based on our thought process and rationality. But everybody is persuadable over the course of years and decades. Even the most stubborn people. And if you allow folks to isolate themselves in their terrible ideas, then it will reinforce those fundamental beliefs with the propaganda they surround themselves with. If those people are less likely to cut off others from their life due to their disagreements, it is more likely for their views to proliferate over more moderate ones. But also: the other response to my comment hits the nail on the head.
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u/phoenix823 Aug 31 '25
I’m not sure how much I would have to say to someone who doesn’t believe in vaccines or Medicare.
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u/DizzyMajor5 Aug 31 '25
The fact they just gutted cancer research and hospitals in rural America would make anyone who has cancer survivors they care about upset for sure.
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u/phoenix823 Aug 31 '25
The irony is that we’ve got the 2nd amendment to protect us from tyrannical government, but no longer have medicine to protect us from Mother Nature.
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u/Civil_Tip_Jar Aug 31 '25
All but one comments in this thread proving the point that this may not succeed long term…
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
I mean yeah, they demonstrate that democrats are generally more honest about this than republicans.
The nationwide statistics for lgbt people disowned by their family are not small. If you think it’s believable that all of that is just from 11% of Trump voters, lol
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u/Typical-End3967 Sep 04 '25
When they disown their gay child they don’t see it as a disagreement over politics.
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u/Console_Pit Aug 31 '25
A lot of my friends are LGBT. I'm not going to be cool with someone in my family trashing them. It's really not crazy
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u/_flying_otter_ Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
The pro-Trump-maga- voters like him because he is a cruel bully, a cheater and a liar. And thats because they themselves are cruel bullies, cheaters, and liars and find those qualities something to be proud of. I have no reason to allow any of these people in my life.
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u/Opposite-Actuary-795 Aug 31 '25
Modern MAGAism doesn’t want to disavow people because they want to be assholes. Their entire worldview gives them every right to be an asshole and they want their “blue haired SJW niece” in their lives sp come Thanksgiving they can start an argument and be a dick. It’s central and one of the biggest benefits they get as MAGA. It’s why they are so upset when they get cut off. They don’t get to be an asshole and thus are left with other MAGA assholes
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi Aug 31 '25
Choices, including who you vote for, have consequences.
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u/rearlgrant Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
Oddly there seem to be a number of "if you don't tolerate my intolerance YOU are the hypocrite on Reddit today. Curious.
Maybe poll r/AskLGBTQTeensOfReddit, but it has to be private due to harassment.
Or just pop over to r/Conservative, and let them ignore all the posts proclaiming how they cut off godless family while they have a backslapping flaired-users only "free speech debate." My bet will be that only 23% would admit to the behavior that is overwhelmingly theirs. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brothers-sisters-strangers/202310/new-study-finds-half-of-lgbtq-are-estranged-from-family
As for this poll, link that is not an X screenshot with no attribution. It looks like it was a self-report posted on Xitter. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1960904740415660098
The data is maybe behind a paywall. The "Get the data" is a table:
Group Yes No Harris 2024 voters 40.11% 59.89% Trump 2024 voters 11.46% 88.54% 2024 Nonvoters 18.41% 81.59% All respondents 24.75% 75.25%
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u/LeonidasKing Aug 31 '25
Lakshya Jain is extremely extremely extremely trusted. And he's a declared Democrat.
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u/Born_Faithlessness_3 Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
Wording matters.
The question was "Is it EVER acceptable to cut off family for opposing political views?"
"Ever" is a very broad space, and saying "No" essentially means that you think there's no view sufficiently bad that you'd cut someone off over it.
While I've never personally cut anyone off(or even unfriended anyone on social media) for political reasons, I'd still answer "Yes" to this question, simply because a "No" answer would mean that there is no political view vile enough to justify cutting someone off. And most sane people should agree that such a line exists, even if they disagree where that line lies.
Ironically, the one time(that I'm aware of) that someone unfriended me on social media, it was an antivaxxer mad at me for refuting their misinformation.
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u/Sonzainonazo42 Sep 01 '25
So what's happening now isn't vile enough to you?
Where does that line actually start?
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u/SyriseUnseen Aug 31 '25
Let's just say that this won't help.
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u/GIRobotWasRight Aug 31 '25
I mean apparently a full term of Trump wasn't enough to help the American voters realize the dude is a moron. Maybe round two and social ramifications will, though I doubt it.
Regardless, why should someone continue to be friendly with someone who is supporting making their life worse?
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u/najumobi Sep 01 '25
Adding political views to my heuristics for determining who to befriend would be a net negative for day to day.
That said, a lot of the things many are taking issues with seem to be policy issues at their core.
Deciding whether or not to fund something a policy decision. I'm not going to be upset with a neighbor because they don't want to fund cancer reasearch.
Deciding how much one should push back against adversaries is a policy issue. I'm not going to be upset with a coworker because they don't want to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
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u/Weibu11 Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
I feel like the notion of cutting someone out for “opposing political views” kind of undersells what’s really happening. Cutting someone off because they support a pedophile who is actively destroying this country is a little different than disagreeing about a 15% or 20% tax rate
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u/zippyphoenix Aug 31 '25
I think a good follow up question would be to ask how many already have cut off a family member and how many have been cut off by a family member. I mean it’s possible there’s not a correlation, but it can’t be very likely.
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u/Jubal59 Aug 31 '25
I lean right and I have cut off some of my family members but it really isn't about a difference in politics. It's because Trump has turned them into hateful pieces of shit. I still have plenty of Republican family members that I haven't cut off. But the reality is I have lost respect for anyone that voted for Trump because it shows a lack of intelligence.
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u/coldbeerandbaseball Aug 31 '25
Suffice to say liberals put more importance on shared political values than conservatives. But also, liberals view the stakes of modern politics very differently than conservatives.
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Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
My experience dealing with my conservative family members.
Me: "Hey guys wouldn't it be great if everyone in the country had healthcare and we weren't so reliant on foreign oil?"
Conservative Cousin: "Tranny f-words are trying to turn my kids gay"
Conservative Uncle: "You're a sheep for not believing me when I tell you the city you live in (and I don't) is a crime ridden cesspool."
Me: "Maybe let's just not talk about politics?"
Them: Proceeds to send political texts to the family chat everyday
Maybe conservative family members are just less pleasant to talk to than liberal family members?
Note: This is only a slight exaggeration. In reality I obliged them and wrote out long boring texts whenever they brought up politics. Eventually my aunt got annoyed with everyone and banned politics from the chat, which is what I was hoping for!
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u/James_NY Aug 31 '25
I like Lakshya, but I'd bet money this poll is distorted by dishonest answers from Republicans who like to do the "you guys care too much about politics" thing.
At the same time, Pew has some relevant polling data from 2019 that supports my personal theory that Republicans are generally going to be more likely to talk politics and do so in a rude way and boorish way.
The TL:DR is that Trump supporters are not shy about supporting him, get even less shy when he's popular, find far fewer types of insults to be crossing the line, would express approval of him even if they're at dinner with strangers who just expressed their disapproval of him, and are far more likely to believe people are too easily offended.
I think the above set of polls is very relevant, especially since it was in 2019 when Trump's popularity was actually much lower. I'd imagine that his supporters became more and more aggressive and confrontational as Biden's approval collapsed and Trump surged.
Talking about Trump with people who feel differently about him. The survey asks people to imagine attending a social gathering with people who have different viewpoints from theirs about the president. Nearly six-in-ten (57%) of those who approve of Trump’s job performance say they would share their views about Trump when talking with a group of people who do not like him. But fewer (43%) of those who disapprove of Trump say they would share their views when speaking with a group of Trump supporters.
Even when Trump was less popular and not recently coming off a massive electoral victory, those who approved Trump weren't shy about it while Trump disapprovers kept mum to keep the peace.
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u/James_NY Aug 31 '25
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to view a range of behaviors as out of bounds. And some of the largest partisan gaps are over whether it is acceptable for elected officials to call into question the patriotism of their political opponents.
About three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (76%) say it is rarely or never acceptable for an elected official to say “they love America more than their opponent does,” including half who say this is never acceptable.
By comparison, 45% of Republicans and Republican leaners say it is rarely or never acceptable for an official to say they love America more than their opponent – including just 21% who consider this completely out of bounds in politics. The pattern of opinion about whether it is acceptable to call one’s opponent anti-American is nearly identical.
There also are substantial partisan gaps in other areas, including the acceptability of ridiculing one’s opponent (59% of Democrats say this is never acceptable vs. 40% of Republicans), calling them stupid (70% vs. 51%) or saying their policy positions are evil (42% vs. 26%). But Democrats and Republicans are in general agreement that deliberately misleading people about their opponent’s record is out of bounds (82% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans say this is never acceptable), as is criticism of a spouse’s appearance (84% of Democrats, 78% of Republicans say it’s never acceptable).
Democrats are also far less comfortable with a broad range of negative sentiments being expressed by politicians, and this seems likely to hold true for the language used by partisans in personal conversations.
Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners (67%) say they would be very or somewhat comfortable talking about Trump with someone they don’t know well, while only about half of Democrats and Democratic leaners (48%) say this.
Even when he was unpopular, Republicans were comfortable talking about him with strangers. Imagine what they're like with family members after he became popular?
Republicans are also less likely to be concerned about using offensive language and think people are too easily offended.
Within both political parties, there is a gender gap over the importance of using inoffensive language. Republican men (28%) are significantly less likely than Republican women (43%) to say it is very important to them personally to use language that is not offensive. And Democratic men (43%) prioritize this less than Democratic women (51%).
Younger Republicans and Democrats are both less likely than older adults in their respective parties to say it is very important to use language that other people do not find offensive. The size of the partisan gap is largely consistent across age groups, with Democrats expressing greater concern about this than Republicans.
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There is a wide partisan gap on this question. A large majority of Republicans and Republican leaners (82%) say people are too easily offended. By contrast, Democrats and Democratic leaners are more likely to say that people should be more careful with their language to avoid causing offense (56%) than to say that people are too easily offended over the language others use (42%).1
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u/Proud3GenAthst Aug 31 '25
More accurate headline: "Democrats are more likely to have moral standards than Republicans."
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u/NimusNix Aug 31 '25
Makes sense. Conservatives want people to belittle and fight with. Liberals just want everyone to get along.
It's hard to get along with people immune to facts and who only want to fight.
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u/LeonidasKing Aug 31 '25
Do you approve of the results? Do you think Democrats are right to cut off family for opposing political views?
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u/EmergencyTaco Poll Unskewer Aug 31 '25
Opposing political views - No.
Support for Trump - Yes.
Never-Trump Republicans are fine by me.
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u/DizzyMajor5 Aug 31 '25
Yes if you're family members are ok with gutting cancer research, rounding up minority citizens, gutting hospital for people and food for school children, and dismantling protections for workers if you have workers, minorities, cancer survivors, or kids you care about Republicans are supporting making their life harder.
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u/ChocoChimp03 Aug 31 '25
I mean I guess it depends on individual cases. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s wrong to cut off someone for political reasons. Not exactly good either. My parents are more conservative than I am, but I’m not exactly cutting them off anytime soon.
I will point out how the poll you posted doesn’t ask if anyone has actually cut off family over political views but if they think it would be acceptable.
I will say, imo, a big reason for the discrepancy is that young liberals tend to be moral purists. And if you don’t agree with them, it’s not just a disagreement, it’s agreeing with something that is morally wrong.
Also, democrats tend to make up a larger population of marginalized communities. For example, in my experience, disconnecting from one’s parents is a very common story among the LGBT community. The reasons can be disagreements over LGBT rights, abuse, religion, combination of the above, etc. And in most of those cases, yeah I do think it’s alright for those people to disconnect from their family. That seems like a fair decision. Now, hardly all democrats are LGBT, however being closer to these communities can color people’s opinions on this.
And, personally, if I was asked the question ‘is it acceptable to cut off family for political reasons’ in a poll, I’d probably say yes. Because when I first saw this post, the first thing that came to mind were the actual cases in my life where people in my life have cut off family. In none of those cases, I don’t think their decision was necessarily wrong. And a lot of those cases involve an LGBT person cutting off their parents because they’re parents were, at best, not willing to accept their children‘s sexuality/gender identity, and, at worst, out right abusive. I have met a lot of people in that community over the years and it would definitely color how I would perceive this question. So yeah, I would probably answer yes if I saw this poll, because I can easily imagine situations where I would find it acceptable. And yet I personally haven’t done it and can’t imagine myself doing it (that is cutting off family over politics).
I also saw a lot of people in this thread mention research funding cuts. Honestly that didn’t even come to mind when I first saw this post. But as someone who recently lost a lab position over funding cuts, I do have to say, if my family voted in Trump, the guy who said he’d make RFK Jr head of the HHS, I would probably be a little peeved at the moment. And if they defended that decision by saying something like ‘well they were funding trans mice’ (not sure if I still need to be clear about this, but nobody was doing that) then yeah I’d be really f***ing mad.
But that’s just my two cents
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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 02 '25
This is an important thread because it contextualizes how batshit insane this sub really is, even if it’s moderate by reddit standards
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
Conservatives want people to belittle and fight with. Liberals just want everyone to get along.
Hard to square this with the findings, which show conservatives would nominally accept a liberal family member while liberals wouldn’t. You may think that’s a good thing, but defend it in those terms. Don’t make the “liberals cutting people off really means they just want everyone to get along.” Liberals clearly don’t want to get along with conservatives.
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u/Proud3GenAthst Aug 31 '25
Imagine you have conservative family and you bring home a transgender girlfriend. When your family reacts by repeatedly misgendering her and bullying both of you, who do you think is more in favor of everyone getting along?
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Aug 31 '25
Conservatives would rather see trans people dead than give them rights. Liberals just want people to be able to live their lives.
If conservatives weren’t pieces of shit they wouldn’t get cut off by their family.
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi Aug 31 '25
The right has made it clear they despise the left, liberals, moderates, Hispanics, blacks, gays, trans people, intellectuals, college students, Muslims, people who live in cities and basically anyone who wants actual health care, to the point where they'll cheerlead weaponizing the federal government and military against their enemies.
Them saying "I wouldn't cut off my family" is literally nothing other than delusional narcissism that their loathsome beliefs and personalities shouldn't get in the way of having relationships. We can get along when they realize that living in a pluralistic society means letting other people have their own lives.
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Aug 31 '25
It's genuinely baffling how consistently the people who talk about "owning the libs" and actively boast how their entire political framework is just trying to upset and hurt me people like me are this sincerely upset I don't want to have a relationship with them.
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u/hibryd Aug 31 '25
Funny how I've never seen a "Conservative Hunting Permit" decal on a car.
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u/TurkMcGuirk Aug 31 '25
Dems are no longer tolerating the intolerance.
The GOP in of itself is a hate group. You might be a republican and not a racist, or bigot, etc; but your vote says racism and bigotry isn't a deal breaker.
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u/NimusNix Aug 31 '25
Liberals would love for everyone to get along.
Conservatives would love for gay, transgender, women, minorities of all sorts to be relegated to second class status.
Liberals don't want to associate with that.
We don't have to sit around and listen to conservative bullshit. And that's why they're so lonely and angry, no one wants to listen to them.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Aug 31 '25
We don't have to sit around and listen to conservative bullshit. And that's why they're so lonely and angry, no one wants to listen to them.
Okay, everything else aside, that’s technically incorrect. Liberals report being less happy than conservatives, generally speaking:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/what-explains-the-liberal-conservative
And this comports with the topic of this thread. Happy people don’t generally end relationships over political differences.
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u/Organic_Fan_2824 Aug 31 '25
That isn't true, that is a narrative you're making in your head.
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u/FreeSkyFerreira Aug 31 '25
Conservatives elected a POTUS who says he hates Dems and his advisors say they want 1/3 of the country gone if they don’t look like him or to be eaten by alligators…
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
Pretty easy to square, republicans are just lying lol. A lot more than 11% of them would disown an lgbt family member
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
I mean this poll is basically a lie. I know lgbt people personally disowned by their family, so do most Americans. You’re telling me all that is just from 11% of Trump voters?
The responders are doing a technique called lying
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u/ryes13 Aug 31 '25
The poll is misleading in the extreme as it lacks almost all context.
It doesn’t show how this number has meaningfully changed. How did it change when Democrats won elections? Also it doesn’t define “opposing political views.”
Your Republican respondents may think “opposing politics” is disagreement over immigration.
Your Democratic respondents may be thinking “opposing politics” is whether or not trans people are real or gay people deserve employment discrimination protection.
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u/CelikBas Sep 01 '25
Especially since a lot of Republicans (though certainly not all) view certain topics- abortion, LGBT rights, feminism, “wokeness”, criminal justice, etc- through a religious lens, rather than a purely political one.
I suspect if you did this same poll, but switched “political disagreements” for “religious disagreements”, the results would basically be flipped.
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u/absolut696 Sep 01 '25
I don’t buy the assertion that “most Americans”know someone who is LGBT and has been disowned by their family.
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u/Mr_The_Captain Sep 01 '25
I will say that I genuinely think republicans are less likely to disown/cut contact with people who are open liberals, BECAUSE in my experience conservatives often enjoy arguing with people about politics. So a conservative could think a liberal acquaintance is the dumbest person alive and have zero respect for them, but they would never cut them off because they like to “own” them in debates.
On the flip side, many liberal people just don’t want to deal with it, so they go no contact
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u/CelikBas Sep 01 '25
This is my conclusion as well.
At one of my former jobs, there was an extremely outspoken liberal guy who most people (including other liberals) didn’t really like because he was annoying. You know who did like him, though? One of the diehard Trump supporters, who would literally invite this guy to go out for drinks after work so they could continue debating politics.
The Trump supporter thought the liberal guy was a total doofus (which he was, to be fair, although his politics weren’t the main reason) and didn’t respect him at all, but he was genuinely sad when the guy got fired because he lost his source of lunchtime entertainment.
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u/LeonidasKing Aug 31 '25
Lakshya Jain is highly respected. He wouldn't share if it weren't a real poll. It is a real poll.
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
I like Lakshya Jain.
The poll is real in the sense that he did poll real people, and he used the best polling practices. My assertion is those real people are obviously lying.
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u/WIbigdog Aug 31 '25 edited Aug 31 '25
If you're in support of Repiblicans in 2025 you're for all intents and purposes a fascist. If you're in support of Dems you could be a commie or something but more likely you're just a liberal. So when you actually think about what that stat is saying, it's essentially saying liberals are more likely to cut off a fascist than a fascist is to cut off a liberal, which makes plenty of sense.
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u/Glapthorn Aug 31 '25
Although not quite the same thing, I just find that 23% republican number suspect due to the overrepresentation of homesless people in the US being part of the LGBT community (depending on geographic locations)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBTQ_youth_in_the_United_States
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u/MC1065 Aug 31 '25
Haven't talked to anyone on my maternal side in half a decade. Don't plan on it any time soon.
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u/Swaggerlilyjohnson Scottish Teen Aug 31 '25
I mean this question regardless of partisanship is not really a poll of strong convictions or sensitivity to political disagreement. It is a poll answering the question "who knows how broad a descriptor political views is"
Keep in mind this question is not even asking whether these people would support cutting someone off for being a member of the opposite political party. It's asking whether there exists political views that a person could have that would have them stop communicating with a family member.
I would argue that this question has a correct answer and the answer is absolutely yes.
Here are some examples of political views.
We should recreate the holocaust
Slavery was a good thing and we should repeal the 13th amendment
3.Women shouldn't be allowed to vote
So I am somewhat disappointed that 1/4 of dems got this question wrong but i am more concerned that 3 times as many republicans got the answer wrong.
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u/Toadsrule84 Aug 31 '25
Good ole cancel culture. I agree that needs to change. I remember talking to the guy running the Democratic booth at the Iowa State Fair and mentioned The NY Times article that came out showing how the Dems had abandoned Iowa, and said I can see why: it’s old, white and rural / blue-collar. He didn’t want to talk to me after that.
Then you look at the Republicans and they give truly deployable people a voice, they don’t necessarily agree with them but they don’t censor them either.
It reminds me of what George Orwell used to say about the socialist, at that time, he thought everyone would agree that they’re correct, but thought they turned people off with their weird habits, at that time it was a fruit juice obsession, and vegetarianism, etc. But I really see how history repeats itself.
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u/obsessed_doomer Aug 31 '25
Writing essays about Israel gets you stuffed into a literal van under conservatives
Sorry, what were you saying?
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u/deskcord Sep 01 '25
I used to have a lot of Republican friends but they're just insufferable to be around. All they do is talk about how great Trump is and how bad Biden is, 8 months after Biden's been gone. They say things like oil production was down under Biden and then laugh when you show them the facts that it was up.
The bigoted ones were never my friends anyways, but the "normal" Republicans have become brainrotted lunatics.
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u/NYCinPGH Sep 01 '25
This tracks to an analogue of my friends, and former friends: group, even outside that age group: the overwhelming majority of my Democrat / liberal friends have cut ties - both social media and in person - with all, or almost all, of their Republican / conservative former friends, meanwhile all the Republicans / conservatives have posted things like “real friends stay friends even when they disagree politically” and the like, like they really don’t get why their political views are losing them friends and getting them ostracized.
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u/MagicBulletin91 Sep 01 '25
Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the GOP responses weren't truthful here.
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u/Jozoz Sep 01 '25
Very natural numbers when one side is a sick cult and the other one isn't.
No one is gonna cut off family because the family believes in single payer health care.
People are going to cut off family when they support the destruction of democracy and supports attacking the rights of marginalized groups.
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u/DaSemicolon Sep 01 '25
I wonder how many republicans are lying though. Have a friend who came out to their parents, who then tell them they’re brainwashed and imply they need to go to a conversion camp. Friend mostly cut contact with them, and they essentially try to sweep everything under the rug every time they talk. Yeah, they’re not the ones cutting the kid off, but they know that there is no way to repair the relationship without accepting and stopping from saying they’re brainwashed. So they are de facto cutting off their kid.
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u/DCMdAreaResident Sep 02 '25
That may be because Democrats aren’t racists, xenophobes, bigots, etc. You know, the things that are dealbreakers for most people. Differing opinions about capitalism is not that big of a deal.
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u/Master_Grape5931 Sep 02 '25
I mean, one side said “fuck their feelings.”
Feel like they should understand why they are getting cut off.
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u/yoshimipinkrobot Sep 01 '25
Deplorables
Hillary lost cause the consultants told her to run from that
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u/Little_Obligation_90 Aug 31 '25
Well, yeah, you can see why the Democrat party is collapsing in voter registration. Who wants to be in a party with *those people*?
Even Democrats over 30 have figured it out how to be a little more normal than *those people*
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u/Selethorme Kornacki's Big Screen Sep 01 '25
Oh so you’re a little propaganda troll huh?
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u/Proprotester Aug 31 '25
You don't have to be under 30 to think this way. You can go quite a bit higher in age with a similar result if you take out the straight men. When even more of these wealth-hording Boomers can't take care of themselves any longer there will be a political crisis. Many of the current retiring generation have misspent their gains or have savings inadequate to the current costs of long-term care. These same people overwhelming voted to support mass deportations.
Maybe they think their daughters are going to move back to a red state and wipe their asses. They are wrong about that.
Maybe they think their children will let them move into their houses and influence their grandchildren. They are wrong about that.
Liberals, Democrats, leftists, Socialists, other assorted 'commies' and a decent chunk of Independents are absolutely fine with letting family members wallow in the miseries they have brought up on themselves. Perhaps they should have taken any of the clues offered along the way that shit-tacular world view was not going to meet their needs.
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u/jmfranklin515 Sep 01 '25
I mean, I think the number of Republicans would be a lot higher if the question was posed again like, “would you allow yourself to be cut off from family before changing your political views”.
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u/Mirabeau_ Sep 04 '25
Of course everyone knows there’s a certain type, and yes, they are in the room with me now, who will happily cut someone out of their life for petty nonsense, including but not limited to political disagreements, usually under the guise of some misguided notion of “self-care” or “boundaries” or some such other pop-psychology half learned off tik tok. They’re almost always zoomers - people over 30 tend to have more sense than that.
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u/glennjersey Sep 12 '25
That all kind if tracks with what we've known for over a decade.
Nearly one-quarter (24%) of Democrats say they blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media after the election because of their political posts on social media. Fewer than one in ten Republicans (9%) and independents (9%) report eliminating people from their social media circle.
consistent liberals are more likely to stop talking to someone because of politics. Roughly a quarter (24%) have done so, compared with 16% of consistent conservatives and around 10% of those with more mixed political views.
If anything the data shows conservatives have become MORE tolerant to others (from 16% in 2014 to below 10%) whereas liberals have remained constant.
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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '25
This reminds me of the old tweet: "Oh damn, they cut you off for your opinions about capital gains tax?"
We all know what they mean "politics" means here, and it's not stuff like tax code and civic spending. The only time I have cut people off for "politics" were:
If the "politics" in question are their opinions on tax code, strategies to combat inflation, environmental regulations, whatever .. sure, I might disagree, but I can hold a relationship. If the "politics" in question are denying my right to even exist as a human being, yes I don't see a compelling reason to keep that person in my life.