Politics of Dating

Let's imagine a situation where everything seems to be perfect with your anonymous matches and your conversations are going great. After you revealed your identities, you also happened to have physical attractions for each other. Everything is perfect...until it is discovered that you have different political views. Would that be a dealbreaker?

“The conversations we have aren’t just about how our days are going anymore. They’re about unavoidable topics, like police brutality."

- Ashley Mack

Politics are front and center of all the conversations currently. Unsurprisingly, many of our users are putting more emphasis on "political” compatibility.

• In a survey conducted by Bumble, they found that out of 50 factors, women ranked politics ninth, behind smoking habits, family plans, life goals, and relationship intent. Furthermore, 33-35% of users said the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement made them care more about the political views of their potential match, said Jemma Ahmed, Bumble’s head of insights.

• On OkCupid, a dating site known for lengthy questionnaires that help people pin down potential partners, politics has become the most popular category. More than 1.2 million people who use OkCupid said they prefer to date people who share their political views. Women were more likely to say so than men. The platform recently began offering users a “voter badge,” a digital equivalent of an “I Voted” sticker.

People who have been out of the dating pool for a while may see this as a sea change. “For my generation and most generations before me, it was, ‘Do not talk politics until you’re down the path of a relationship,’” said Melissa Hobley, 40, OkCupid’s chief marketing officer. “Now it’s ‘I don’t even want to see you in my lineup of potential people to chat with if your politics on certain issues don’t align with mine, or if you are not a voter.’”

Source: New York Times.

Image by John P. Dessereau.