As the 2016 election heats up, it seems pretty clear that Democrats and Republicans do NOT get along. For many people, politics affects their lives outside of voting, too. Research has shown that the two parties will often avoid dating or living near each other. Some even refuse to approve of their children dating someone of outside of their party. Knowing this, data journalists and political scientists at FiveThirtyEight decided to do some research of their own to see how many Americans married someone of another party. They wanted to know who these people were, what affected this decision and how involved in politics they were.
The researchers studied a sample group of married registered voters in thirty states. They defined “marriage” within the study as male-female partners who lived together, shared a last name, were aged within 15 years of each other and were the oldest such couple within a household.
Researchers found that people tended to marry within their party. Only 30 percent of households were made up of a mismatched pair. However, even the mismatched pairs were not usually opposite-party ones, Democrats married to Republicans made up only a third of the couples with differing political views, while the rest were Democrats or Republicans married to Independents. In addition, men identified as the Republican within an opposite-party marriage twice as often as women did.
Overall, though, people preferred to live with a like-minded partner. The results showed that 55 percent of couples in the study were in a same-party relationship.
The findings indicated that young couples married outside of their party more often than older couples did. Researchers believed the reason for this was that younger voters, like us, were more likely to register as Independents. Surprisingly, the number of Democratic-Republican pairs was higher in the older population, meaning there were more couples of opposite parties in our grandparent’s generation than in ours. Again, this probably relates to the growing number of Independents among Millennials.
The research went further than just individual couples. “Battleground neighborhoods,” or those neighborhoods that seem so divided you’d think neighbors probably hated each other, were not as common as you might think. In fact, mixed-party pairs actually made up half of the couples in these neighborhoods. The variety of different political beliefs within one household likely means that these neighbors are accepting of different viewpoints and ideas.
Party identifications even affected the voter turnout rates of the couples. Those married to someone of the same party were much more likely to go out and vote than those married to someone of a different party. One reason for this may be that couples in mixed-party relationships are probably not super involved and active in politics—which is why they married someone with differing political views in the first place. Another reason may be that states with closed primaries bar Independents from voting. If your spouse can’t come with you, you might not be motivated to go vote alone.
Politics is already a pretty divisive topic—adding a marriage into the equation could raise tensions even higher. If you’re passionate about your political beliefs, it might be a good idea to seek out a like-minded partner, especially if you plan on voting consistently.