- The US has increasingly become politically polarized in recent decades.
- A third of respondents in a recent poll said they can’t even be friends with rival party supporters.
- A similar poll in 2016 found that 7% of voters reported friendships ending because of the election.
As the 2024 presidential election quickly approaches, a large number of young adults say they’re unwilling to be friends with someone voting for the presidential candidate of the opposing political party.
The poll, conducted between February 3 and 14 by The Generation Lab and Axios to 1,073 young adults, revealed that 33% of respondents said they would “definitely not” or “probably not” be open to being friends with someone who voted for the opposing party’s presidential nominee (selecting Republican former President Donald Trump or Democratic current President Joe Biden, specifically).
Monday’s survey comes around seven years after a Monmouth University poll found that 7% of voters said they ended friendships over the vitriolic race between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Those friendships ended, the poll found, as 70% of respondents said the presidential campaign “brought out the worse in people.”