Romeo (R.) loves the Second Amendment, low taxes and Ronald Reagan. Thinks we need a stronger military and to get America back on top again. Is probably pictured holding a fish. Go Packers!
Juliet (D.) loves renewable energy, progressive tax structures and making decisions about her body. Thinks college should be free and is “literally obsessed” with Michelle Obama. Is probably pictured at a Carly Rae Jepsen concert.
Would Romeo swipe right on Juliet? Would Juliet even want him to? In 2016, the answer is probably no. Today’s star-crossed lovers are aisle-crossed lovers, as fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to date people of the opposite political party. Though not forbidden per se, bipartisan couples are becoming an endangered species in their own right. That’s true even here in Wisconsin.
As the divide between political parties has grown, our expectations of romantic partners have narrowed. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1994, 16 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Republicans found the other side to be “highly unfavorable.” As of 2014, that number jumped to 38 percent for Democrats and 43 percent for Republicans.
The fact is we don’t like each other, so we’re not dating each other.
The effect is more pronounced among people who are more partisan. According to the same study, 15 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Republicans say they’d be disappointed if a member of the opposite party married into their immediate family, but among consistent Democrats and Republicans, 23 percent of liberals and 30 percent of conservatives said they’d be unhappy about it.
And it’s not just who we date. A study conducted by Yale professor Gregory Huber and Stanford professor Neil Malhotra found that “contemporary period political orientations directly affect the social relationships people seek to form.” Translation: if you like what I like, we’ll get along just fine. The effect, they say, is an amplification of “polarization through the creation of homogenous social networks and households.”
This phenomenon is known as homophily. “Despite what many people think,” says Catalina Toma, UW-Madison associate professor of communication science, “opposites do not attract.” A more accurate phrase is “birds of a feather flock together,” she says. Toma cites the mate assortative model, which shows that in most cases, couples are pretty well matched when it comes to physical attractiveness, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and political affiliation. She also says that physical location plays well into homophily, because the people in our hometown, at school or at work tend to be a self-selected group that’s similar to us. Liberal college campuses and conservative church groups are examples of this.
This sorting and self-selection process makes it easier to find others who are like-minded. Basically we like ourselves so much, we’re on a quest to find the person who best embodies us. But as Jessica Williams pointed out in a segment from “The Daily Show” last year, “In the end, there’s only one way to make sure you agree with your partner on every political point.” Cut to a shot of her having dinner with a mirror, talking to herself about the Keystone pipeline.
It may be true that we’ll never agree on everything with our romantic partners, but are there couples that don’t agree on anything? How does this play out in real life? A familiar example is James Carville and Mary Matalin. He was an adviser for Bill Clinton in the 1990s at the same time she worked with George H.W. Bush. Somehow, 23 years later, they are happily married. In many respects, they’re what we aspire to be. Sure, we think, I can be open-minded and put aside differences for love.
But, let’s be honest, can we really?
August McGinnity-Wake, junior and chair of UW-Madison College Democrats, says he wouldn’t be opposed to dating a Republican, but there are lines to be drawn.
“You know, if you’re at a bar and you’re talking to someone and they say to me, ‘I’m so excited to build that wall!’ I’m not going to really want to continue that conversation,” McGinnity-Wake says.
As someone who was raised on politics, McGinnity-Wake says being a Democrat is just a natural part of who he is. He remembers going to a Madison rally for then-presidential candidate John Kerry when he was 8 years old and protesting a power plant at CamRock park when he was 4 – one of his earliest memories.
“My parents told me the one thing you can’t do if you want to stay in the will is become a Republican,” he says. However, he says he thinks of them as open-minded people who wouldn’t be opposed to him bringing home a conservative.
Dallas Andersen, a senior at Texas Christian University, was also raised in a political family, but in New Glarus, Wisconsin. Andersen says he thinks it’s harder to date the other side now because the parties “have started to approach issues with a different value system, so people no longer are even considering issues at the same starting point.” Even so, he says he’s open to dating a Democrat, despite identifying as a Republican-Libertarian. What’s more important, he says, is if they have the same moral values. He says his parents, both conservative, wouldn’t mind if he dated a Democrat so long as this applied.
Eliana Locke, sophomore at UW-Madison and press secretary for College Democrats, actually has experience dating the other side. She says their differing opinions were part of the fun.
“I just loved arguing with him because he would win sometimes, and it would really piss me off, but I had so much respect for him that he had a completely different opinion from me, but could still articulate it well,” Locke says.
She says the relationship was short and happened over the summer while they were abroad, so it was a different dynamic than dating at school and thinking about the long term. Even so, she says it opened her eyes to a different perspective.
“The way that I see Democrats and Republicans traditionally is that they’re not actually that far apart on the spectrum. You want the same goals, you just have differing opinions on how to get there,” she says.
The biggest turn off, she says, is being uninformed. “I honestly think that I get way more annoyed with someone who’s very liberal but doesn’t know what they’re talking about than someone who’s conservative but actually reads and has informed opinions,” Locke says.
For Locke, McGinnity-Wake and Andersen, who feel passionate about politics and consider it to be part of their identity, it’s probably going to be harder to get along with someone who also feels passionate about politics on the other side.
“If it’s a central aspect of your life, and yet you cannot share this with your partner and cannot engage with them around this … I think creating that no-go zone is not necessarily a good idea,” Toma says. “It creates tensions if you’re basically cutting off an important part of your life from your partner.”
“Someone who can accommodate my crazy is really important,” Locke says. “I [need someone to] just understand why I’m so passionate, and why I miss going to fun football games to go tell people to vote.”
For people who are less passionate about politics, Toma says keeping things on the down-low isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“If it’s just a marginal interest, then avoiding it is probably a good idea because you’re sparing yourself unnecessary conflict,” Toma says. “I say unnecessary because it doesn’t matter that much. It’s just conflict for conflict’s sake.”
That’s what Dick and Kathy Wagenknecht from Hudson do. Married for 56 years with three kids, Dick is a Republican and Kathy is a Democrat (though she wasn’t always, she says). According to Dick, they don’t talk politics at all. “We try not to watch any news, either. At least I don’t,” he says. “I’d rather watch HGTV.”
“We respect each other, so we don’t put something on that we know would really bother the other person,” Kathy says. “We’re more respectful of each other that way, so it’s not in-your-face.”
Back when they started dating, they say religion was a bigger deal breaker than political ties. At the time, they both identified as Republican, but it wasn’t something that they thought about. Today, they say, with the rise of polarization in politics and 24/7 news, things have come much more to the forefront. So much so, HGTV has become their nonpartisan oasis.
Social media and the rise of the internet are other factors often cited as reasons for increasing polarization among the public.
“Theoretically, the internet could be this place where you’re exposed to a variety of ideas and different perspectives, but in reality, people tend to segment themselves into fairly homogenous groups,” Toma says. “You surround yourself with people just like you, creating what my colleagues who study these kinds of things would call an echo chamber … where your network just echoes what you’re saying and kind of amplifies that message.”
Even though they agreed not to talk about it, Kathy admits she sometimes posts political statuses on Facebook. Dick says he doesn’t look at those either.
“He might have unfriended me, I’m not sure! … We post pictures and stuff, but I don’t know if he’s unfriended me or not. Did you?” Kathy asks.
“No, I haven’t unfriended ya,” Dick says.
We increase the polarization of our social networks by filtering out views we don’t like. Locke pointed this out when she said she was watching a Jimmy Kimmel segment on Donald Trump voters. “They interview people and ask them where they got their sources. They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, people are posting on Facebook!’ and I was like, ‘Wow, I never see stuff like that on Facebook.’”
Erika Fehrenbach-Prell and Adam Prell of Altoona have been married for 11 years. Though they went to the same high school, they started dating after their five-year reunion and now have two boys, Ethan, who is 8, and Liam, 5. She’s liberal; he’s conservative. She’s fairly interested in politics; he’s very interested. This, Adam says, helps when it comes to election times in terms of avoiding arguments, but he says ultimately they make it work because it’s just one of the many facets of their marriage – same with money, religion and other big issues.
“Love is a verb. It’s an action word. It’s not a feeling. If it was a feeling, everyone would be divorced,” Adam says. “There’s a saying that the only way you can sharpen steel is by rubbing against other steel. … If you can rub on someone and stick with it over time, it makes you both stronger.”
Being open-minded about it, both he and Erika say, is the key. Plus, it makes life interesting. “If you’re dating yourself, that does get kind of boring,” Erika says.
“You already know that side. … So while you might have something in common, it definitely does make it a lot more interesting if you can be open-minded and talk to the other side on whatever it is,” she says.
And really, isn’t that a lesson we can apply to politics in general?
“The cornerstone of democracy is for multiple views to coexist and for people to engage with one another in a constructive way,” Toma says. “I think that’s a really important skill and one that we need to cultivate.”
Adam says the key is finding common ground and not disregarding one another over disagreements.
“It goes back to something I think Ronald Reagan said, that if you and I agree on 80 percent of things, you’re not my 20 percent enemy, you’re my friend,” Adam says.
According to Kathy Wagenknecht, there are three keys to making things work in the face of disagreement:
“Respect. Listening to each other. Not saying one’s right and one’s wrong.”
That’s not to say there can’t be some competition, though. When the doorbell rang during our interview, Kathy answered and came back to tell me that a college student was out canvassing, “but he wasn’t from my party.”
“I hope you gave him my vote,” Dick says.
“No,” she laughs. “I didn’t tell him about you.”
Katie Hicks
Katie is a senior studying journalism and political science. When she’s not fighting the good fight for political equality, she can be found drinking an ungodly amount of coffee or quoting Parks and Recreation. A proud moment was when Katie’s editor allowed her to publish a pun in a story headline and Ezra Klein said it was “good.” The character she most identifies with is the Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. When Katie grows up, she wants to use her creative powers for good, not evil.