Would You Date Across Party Lines? What the Data Shows

With the midterms on November 3, politics is hard to avoid on a first date this month. For many people it's no longer a topic to steer around. It's a filter. Here's what the research actually shows about how much party matters in dating, and how often couples end up crossing the line anyway.

Would You Date Someone Who Votes for the Other Party?

The most direct data comes from a Pew Research Center survey conducted October 16–28, 2019, among 4,860 U.S. adults. Pew asked people who were single and looking for a relationship (956 respondents) whether they would ever consider a committed relationship with someone from the other side. Anna Brown published the partisan breakdown in April 2020.

"Daters" here means people who were not in a committed relationship and were looking for one (or for either a relationship or casual dates). The vote questions were about the 2016 presidential election.

Three things stand out:

• Democrats were far more resistant. 45% of Democratic daters said they definitely would not consider a Trump voter. Among Republican daters, 19% said they definitely would not consider a Clinton voter.
• A vote mattered more than a party label. Democratic daters were much more open to "a Republican" (57% would consider or already had) than to "a Trump voter" (28%). Republicans showed the same pattern, less sharply.
• Some partisans wouldn't date their own side. 13% of Democratic daters said they would not consider a Clinton voter, compared with 5% of Republicans about Trump voters.

Who Is Least Willing to Date Across Party Lines?

Pew could only break down Democratic daters, because there weren't enough Republican daters in the sample to analyze subgroups. Among Democrats who were single and looking:

• Education: 84% with at least a bachelor's degree would not consider a Trump voter, versus 67% without one.
• Ideology: 78% of liberal Democrats said no to a Trump voter, compared with 63% of moderate and conservative Democrats.
• Race: 78% of nonwhite Democratic daters said no, compared with 63% of white Democratic daters. Nonwhite Democrats were also more likely to rule out a Clinton voter (21% vs. 4%).
• Gender and age: Pew found few differences by gender and no notable differences by age.

The college-educated finding matters if you're dating in a city full of graduate degrees. For a Democratic professional in Manhattan, the people most likely to share your filter are also the people you're most likely to meet.

How Many Married Couples Are Politically Mixed?

Surveys about who you would date are one thing. The best data on who people actually married comes from voter files.

Political scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza, in a 2018 paper in PLOS ONE, analyzed registration records for 18,275,001 married couples in states that record party registration. They identified couples as an opposite-sex pair registered at the same address, sharing a surname and within 15 years of age of each other.

Only about 9% of couples were Democrat-Republican pairs. Most mixed couples included at least one independent.

The partisan gender gap shows up too. Among Democratic women, 67% of husbands were also Democrats; among Democratic men, 77% of wives were. Among Republican women, 79% of husbands were Republicans; among Republican men, 73% of wives were.

Are Younger Couples More Politically Mixed?

Yes, at least by registration. Among married couples under 30, only 40% were both Democrats or both Republicans. Among couples over 80, almost 71% were.

Hersh and Ghitza note that much of this reflects younger adults being more likely to register as independents. It doesn't necessarily mean young couples disagree more. A couple of 29-year-olds where one is a Democrat and one is unaffiliated may vote identically.

Neighborhood matters too. Same-party households were least common in places that split their votes evenly and most common in lopsided ones: in neighborhoods more than 90% Democratic, 68% of married households were two Democrats.

Do Politics Predict Who Ends Up Together?

Political similarity is one of the strongest matching patterns researchers find in couples. In our post on whether opposites attract, a 2023 meta-analysis found partners correlated more strongly on political values than on almost any other trait, ahead of education and far ahead of personality.

That fits the Pew and voter-file data. People screen for politics, and they also meet partners through neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and friend groups that already sort by politics. Both forces push toward same-party couples.

Should Politics Be a Dealbreaker?

The data shows many people treat it as one. Whether you should depends on what the label is standing in for.

Separate the label from the values. A party is a rough bundle of positions. Ask what actually matters to you: how you'd raise kids, how you think about money, faith, family or fairness. Two people with different registrations can share those. Two people with the same one can disagree sharply. Our guide to dealbreakers vs. preferences has a test for telling which is which.

Notice the "vote vs. party" gap in yourself. Pew's daters were much more open to "a Republican" or "a Democrat" than to someone who voted for a specific candidate. If a particular vote is your line, say so. It's a clearer filter than a party.

Talk about it earlier than feels polite. Political values rarely come up on a first date and then decide the relationship months later. It's better to learn early. Our post on green flags on a first date covers how someone handles disagreement, which may tell you more than their position.

Watch the conversation, not the conclusion. If you do date across lines, what matters is whether you can disagree without contempt.

The Bottom Line

Politics is a real filter in dating. Seven in ten single-and-looking Democrats said they wouldn't seriously date a Trump voter, and nearly half of Republican daters said the same about Clinton voters. But real marriages are more mixed than those numbers suggest: in about 18 million couples in the voter file, 29% didn't share a party, though true Democrat-Republican pairs were closer to one in eleven. If politics matters to you, name the specific values behind it and raise them early.

Sources:

• Most Democrats who are looking for a relationship would not consider dating a Trump voter — Anna Brown, Pew Research Center (April 24, 2020), survey of 4,860 U.S. adults conducted October 16–28, 2019
• Topline questionnaire for the Trump/Clinton dating questions — Pew Research Center, American Trends Panel Wave 56
• Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States — Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza, PLOS ONE 13(10): e0203997 (2018)