Young Republicans are far more willing than their Democratic peers to be friends with people who don’t share their political views, according to a new Generation Lab/Axios poll.
SO WHAT
So much for liberal tolerance.
THE NUMBERS
The survey polled 850 students across the nation and was conducted between Nov. 18 and Nov. 22.
37% of Democrat respondents said they would not be friends with someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate, as compared with only 7% of Republicans.
- A whopping 71% of Democrats said they wouldn’t date someone who voted for the other candidate.
- Only 31% of GOP respondents said the same.
- Meanwhile, 41% of Democrats would not shop at or support the business of someone whose political views they disagreed with.
ZOOM OUT
Since before the election of former President Donald Trump, liberals and the media have painted the GOP as the party of bigotry, hate and intolerance.
- But some on the left are starting to question whether progressives’ professed belief in tolerance – for members of the LGBT community, people of color and immigrants – goes out the window when it comes to right-wingers.
- “Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish — like diversity — in our own dominions,” New York Times contributor Nicholas Kristof wrote in a 2016 essay on the lack of intellectual diversity in academia.
- A 2012 study published by Association for Psychological Science found that one-third of social psychologists – an overwhelmingly liberal group – confessed that they’d discriminate against the more conservative candidate, when choosing between two equally qualified candidates.
