Dismayed by the dating scene on campus, University of Iowa first-year student Mary McCurdy added a special request on her Tinder bio: “Please do not swipe right if you voted for Trump.”
Burned in previous relationships with Republican-leaning men, the Democrat said she has drawn a line and will no longer date across the aisle.
McCurdy broke things off a month and a half into seeing someone because she found out he voted for President Donald Trump. She took a week to self-reflect, she said, and ultimately decided her values were too different from her partner’s and ended things with him.
Trump’s second election unveiled a massive gender divide among single male and female voters. The 2024 race to the White House was historic for many reasons, one being how differently single men and women cast their ballots.
“I knew that their political beliefs were important to me because I also think it just kind of boils down to a moral thing,” she said.
This wasn’t the first time this happened to McCurdy. In high school, she had been dating someone for over a year when she noticed she could no longer connect with him. His political views — which opposed McCurdy’s — were a large factor in her decision to end things.
Navigating dating in college is even worse, McCurdy said, especially with the political polarization a Trump presidency brings.
The pre-law student from Atlantic, Iowa, said for her, not aligning with a partner’s morals creates a disconnect, which eventually becomes very apparent in a relationship and is hard to work through.
For UI first-year student Mahogany Vanpelt, “Who did you vote for?” is the first question she asks a potential romantic partner.
Vanpelt also said her politics are her morals, and when she votes, she casts her ballots with her morals in mind.
“I’m going to vote for someone because they align with some of my morals, and if you’re voting against that, it’s just like we’re not agreeing on a moral forefront,” she said. “So, I don’t know how a relationship could continue.”
She said aligning politically is massively important to her because of her identity and how she views life.
“Because I’m Black, and I’m dating someone, and they’re voting for someone in an election that is against everything that I am — like who I am and what I stand for. I just feel like I want to be seen,” she said. “To be loved is to be seen. And I wouldn’t feel like you see me.”
McCurdy and Vanpelt’s experience follows a national trend. Nearly three-quarters of college-educated single women say they would be less likely to date a Trump supporter, according to data published in January by the American Survey Center.
AP VoteCast, which interviewed more than 120,000 voters across the U.S. from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5, 2024, continuing until polls closed, found most unmarried men voted for Trump, while only 39 percent of unmarried women voted for him.
A 2024 study by Innerbody found that three in five people would dump their partner because of political differences. The study found over 86 percent of fellow Democrats are dating fellow Democrats, and roughly 73 percent of Republicans are dating fellow Republicans.
Polarization on the dating scene
UI communications professors said while limiting personal circles to only include people with similar views is a detriment, increased political polarization can prevent meaningful relationships across from forming the political spectrum.
The perception gap sorts people into in-groups and out-groups, creating an us versus them mentality, David Supp-Montgomerie, a UI communication studies associate professor, said, and makes us think other political parties are more extreme than they actually are.
A study by More in Common and YouGov found Americans in different political parties have a distorted image of each other. Overall, the study found Democrats and Republicans think 55 percent of those in an opposing party hold extreme political views, when only 30 percent actually do.
Supp-Montgomerie, who teaches political communication, said the perception gap perpetuates and exacerbates polarization.
College creates a space for people to meet and interact with people who have different experiences, world views, and political opinions, Supp-Montgomerie said, yet there is a tendency for people to form social groups with those who have a similar worldview to them.
“It’s become less common for young people to have friends and close acquaintances that are from a different political group than they are,” he said.
The professor said students lose out on a lot when they surround themselves with people they agree with, such as learning less and not knowing how to defend arguments.
“Social media and dating apps can enforce a kind of echo chamber where you tend to encounter people that reinforce your worldview and your way of seeing things. So, that exacerbates the problem, because then when you do encounter somebody that has a different way of thinking, it’s even more jarring,” he said.
Brian Ekdale, a UI journalism and mass communication professor, has researched political radicalization and extremism. He said people’s political identities have always been strong but are exacerbated by self-selecting into groups people identify with, especially on social media.
“When you go on these spaces, you can construct your social networks, your friend groups, your follows, based on people whose views align with your own, and so you get this sameness.”
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“It does seem like we’re living in an era in which political identities are really salient,” Ekdale said. “They’re really kind of a key part of how someone thinks about themselves and thinks about their relationships with others.”
Ekdale said political identity is a reflection of opinions and values, and not aligning with a romantic partner on these things can make the relationship harder.
“I would say the path to becoming less polarized, in my opinion, doesn’t start by shaming people for not wanting to date someone of a different political ideology,” he said. “I feel like that’s a symptom, not the cause.”
Bridging the political gap
Bridge Iowa, a student organization created this semester to fight political polarization on campus, hosted a political speed dating event on April 4 to counteract political polarization and the gender divide.
“Have you been struggling to find the one?” read a mass email to the UI student body advertising the event.“Tired of hearing your parents talk about how they met in college and want the experience for yourself? Do you have an amazing personality and want someone to share it with?”
President of the organization, UI third-year student Cielo Herrera, said she came up with the idea as a way to encourage civic dialogue about politics and use the power of dialogue to bridge polarization.
“It’s no secret that the politics these days have really polarized our young adults, and especially it’s brought apart the men and women of our generation,” Herrera said. “I think we are seeing a clear divide, and that divide between men and women is also being shown in politics.”
Herrer said the speed dating event brought in over 135 UI students.
Bridge’s Vice President Brianna Aleksiejczyk, a UI third-year student, said there’s a substantial separation between men and women in politics right now. She said it’s important to have curiosity about viewpoints that vary from our own.
“If we all do more to try and understand the other side, then I think we’ll come out of it better and come out of it more connected,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, everybody’s opinions are based on their experiences and the way they were raised and the things that they’ve gone through in their life.”
Both leaders of Bridge said they have seen the political gender divide play out in their personal lives and the lives of their friends, and recognizing the gap inspired the speed dating event.
“It is really difficult to connect with someone when the values are so strongly different,” she said. “I’ve seen that in my own life, and I’ve seen that in my friends’ lives, but Bridge is really about doing whatever you can to push through that, work through that, and continually hear someone out to understand. Maybe you’ll never agree, and that’s okay.”