Nearly all US friendships stay within party lines, study finds

Only a tiny portion of friendships in the US are between a Democrat and a Republican, an eye-opening new study found.

Researchers at Wellesley College looked at 971 adult friend pairs and found that most Americans are not willing to agree to disagree.

The study, published July 5 in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, analyzed two separate friend samples, one in-person and one online.

One study surveyed 537 friend pairs in deep-blue cities like New York and Boston, plus three liberal campuses — Wellesley, Amherst and Babson — and found just 3% of friendships crossed party lines.

Nearly half of participants were Democrats. Only 7% were Republicans.

The second group, 434 friend pairs surveyed online, was more politically balanced — and the number of cross-party friendships more than doubled. With 42% Democrats and 31% Republicans, 8% of friendships spanned the aisle, hinting conservatives may be more willing to mix than their liberal peers.

Even when friendships did cross the aisle, they scored lower on trust, emotional support and mutual understanding, the study found.

But there was one silver lining: the rare few who crossed party lines regarded the other side with less hostility.

“Part of what is destroying our social fabric is that we have set an expectation that to be a good Democrat or Republican, you have to unconditionally hate the other party,” said Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “There is evidence that this social pressure to hate makes the state of partisan conflict seem worse than it actually is.”

That pressure only grows, he added, when people don’t have personal ties to someone on the other side.

“If you don’t know a Republican or Democrat, it is easier to assume that they are unpatriotic, evil or immoral,” Westwood told The Post. “Without a personal connection you can get lost in the nonsense coming from social media, cable news and Washington DC.”

Only about a quarter of friend pairs said they disagreed on major issues like abortion, immigration or gun rights, suggesting most people befriend those who already see eye to eye.

And when politics entered the chat, things got even rockier — a quarter of those who disagreed said the conversation damaged the friendship.

Some simply obliterate the friendship entirely, a 2024 study found

One in five adults have cut off a close relative over politics, and half said the break happened in 2024 leading up to the election, a 2024 survey from The Harris Poll found.

Among those still in contact, a third said they felt uncomfortable at a family gathering because of someone’s political views, and just as many feared future events could turn ugly.

“It is rewarding to be around people who validate your views of the world and of the moral order, and from mildly stressful to absolutely intolerable to be around people who disagree with beliefs and values that are important to us,” Dr. Peter Ditto, a psychology professor at UC Irvine, told The Post. 

And it’s a vicious cycle.

“The more people hear about polarization, hostility and how few Democrats and Republicans are friends, the more they become convinced that they should also keep quiet,” said University of Michigan political communications professor Yanna Krupnikov.

Ditto warned that as politics becomes more central to people’s identities, it’s taking a toll on their personal lives.

“I worry as I see more and more evidence that politics is getting personal … that the corrosive political polarization in contemporary U.S. politics is seeping into people’s everyday lives in ways that impact their well-being,” he said.