Friendship has updated its terms of service. Please read them carefully before continuing, because 37% of your classmates already declined.
An Axios/Generation Lab poll of college students, reported in December 2021, found that 37% of college Democrats said they would not be friends with someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate. Among college Republicans, the figure was 5%. The same poll found 71% of college Democrats would not date someone who voted for the GOP candidate, versus 31% of Republicans who would not date a Democrat. On business, 41% of Democrats would not shop at or support a business owned by a Republican, against 7% of Republicans. On work, 30% of Democrats would not work for someone who voted the other way, versus 7% of Republicans.
Read that again, slowly, because the asymmetry is the story. One side treats a vote as a character reference. The other mostly treats it as Tuesday.
The modern friendship now ships with fine print. Section one: we agree on everything, or we agree to nothing. Section two: past votes may be used against you in perpetuity, including votes cast before we met. Section three: the friendship may be terminated at any time, without notice, for wrongthink, wrongvote, or wronglaugh. Section four: by accepting this friendship, you consent to having your entire personality reduced to a ballot you cast in a booth you cannot un-enter.
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This is not, strictly speaking, new. People have always ended friendships over politics. What is new is the paperwork — the formalization of it, the pride in it, the way a generation raised on user agreements now applies the same logic to human beings. Accept all cookies, or no friendship for you.
The tragedy is that the 5% figure shows the alternative was right there the whole time. Most people, it turns out, are still capable of being friends with someone who voted differently. They just have to get past the terms and conditions first. And unlike most terms and conditions, these ones people actually read — then weaponized.
The underlying reporting is filed in the Evidence Locker: Star News Network, reporting the Axios/Generation Lab poll (Dec 14, 2021).
