Do Americans have many friends across party lines?

Younger and more progressive Americans are the most likely to talk politics with friends - and are slightly more likely to report having zero close friends with whom they disagree politically.

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Earlier this year, you may recall that I moderated a focus group of conservative men for The New York Times about their views on whether or not they feel they fit into society today. The answer, very broadly, was "not really".

While the focus group often covered political topics, the most striking answers in my view were more about whether these men felt that they had any places to build or foster social bonds, to make new friends, and so on. (While this part of the discussion was not included in the abridged transcript, you can find it around thirty minutes into the full audio.)

I asked the men if in the last five years, they had made any new friend. A few said no, with those men noting "I don't go out of my way to find new friends" or that having too many friends is too much work or a drain.

"New friends are shut down. At this stage of my life, I've got a close inner circle and that's it..." said Robert. But for older friends, "issues don't break us up." Another participant noted that while he'd had some friends drop him after decades over political disputes, others said that longer term friendships were more able to weather divides.

Robert isn't alone; for most Americans, the older you get the less likely you are to have new friends who you'd also count as "close friends."

Research from the American Enterprise Institute last year confirmed that there has been a trend toward considering fewer people to be close friends in general, and with men in particular expressing less likelihood of leaning on friends for emotional support.

Personally, I feel very lucky to have many close friends - including some who I've met in my thirties while living here in Washington - including many with whom I disagree. It is never hard for me to imagine why someone might hold a view that is different from my own, often because I have a person in my inner circle who holds or is at least sympathetic to that view.

Many Americans do not have that blessing. In a 2018 study by Eric Plutzer and Michael Berkman in partnership with The McCourtney Institute at Penn State, they found that a shockingly low number of Americans felt that those of the other party voted as they did because they "believed they were voting in the best interests of the nation." This didn't necessarily mean they were outright hostile to those of the other side, but rather than most of their respondents struggled to put themselves in the shoes of someone of the other party. In the words of the researchers, many Americans are "baffled" when it comes to considering why someone might hold a view different from their own.

This spring, my students at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service had frank conversations about the value of listening to people of the other party and where they have their limits. It's one thing to have a friend who, say, takes a different view on government spending, but it might be hard or impossible to strike up a friendship with someone who holds more socially conservative views, some noted.

If our politics say something about our deeply-held values, then perhaps it is fair game to say you only want friends who are politically likeminded. Progressives, in the aforementioned AEI study, were almost three times as likely (28%) as conservatives (10%) to report having ended a friendship over politics.

But when someone posts something on their social media accounts like "if you don't support a woman's right to choose, you may as well just unfriend me!!!", while it may be a sincere reflection of what someone values in their own friend group, it is also not exactly doing much in the realm of attempted persuasion or bridge building.

On my last day of discussion group with my Georgetown students, I gave them a task: come up with a survey question on a topic of great interest. They wanted to understand more about whether voters do or don't have ideologically diverse friend groups. With limited guidance from me, my students put together a survey question to measure whether people tend to have politically mixed friend groups, whether they are often surrounded only by likeminded folks, or whether they are usually the "odd one out".

Around two-thirds of Democrats and six-in-ten Republican respondents said that their friend groups are made of mostly fellow partisans. While about five percent of both Republicans and Democrats are the "odd ones out" in their group, the bulk have mostly politically homogenous friend groups. In fact, for around one-third of Democrats, they reported having no close friends of the other party. (And while the differences by age were not huge, those under age 30 were the most likely to report having zero close friends of a different political party.)

This isn't just confined to young people or the political left; looking at divides within parties, Republicans who consider themselves Trump supporters first-and-foremost are among the most likely to say they have zero close friends with whom they disagree, almost twice as likely as for Republicans who consider themselves party supporters more than Trump supporters.

Younger Americans are also slightly more likely to report talking politics with their friends "a few times a week or more" and both younger and more progressive respondents were more likely to say they'd talk to their friends to try to persuade them to vote for a certain candidate or party if asked.

With that said, most Americans (51%) said they probably or definitely would not try to persuade a friend on politics. A majority of voters in almost all age groups say they talk politics with friends "less than a few times a month". Politics may be straining more and more friendships, but there are also a lot of Americans who wish this wasn't the case.

While norms of not talking about sensitive topics like politics, sex and religion may hold for older Americans, younger voters seem slightly more likely to be willing to voice their views on hot-button topics and to seek out friends who hold views aligned with their own. (Meanwhile, it isn't that older voters are out there building politically blended friend groups; older voters aren't necessarily out seeking new friends as often as younger people just in general.)

Building bridges across party lines may be an important way to turn down the temperature and build greater empathy. But for voters young and old, there are reasons why the idea of going out of your way to befriend someone in the opposition just doesn't seem particularly appealing these days.

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Thanks again for being a reader of Codebook. Do you have a friend group made up of those with a wide range of views? Do you avoid talking politics altogether? Hop to the comments to share.

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