The politics behind picking a romantic partner
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A new study reveals the role that politics play when picking out a romantic partner — particularly for older adults.
“Findings show that politics are highly salient in partner selection across gender, class and ideology,” said Cassandra Cotton, assistant professor at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. “This suggests that older singles place substantial importance on political views when choosing partners.”
Cotton and co-author Analicia Zamora Castro, an ASU graduate, analyzed data from 67 adults, aged 55–92.
The study, “The Elephant in the Room? Considerations of Politics Among Older Adult Daters,” focused on two questions:
- How do older adult daters consider potential partners’ political views?
- How do perceptions of rising political polarization shape these preferences?
As Valentine's Day approaches, ASU News spoke to Cotton about how politics is becoming more of a hot topic in the dating scene.
Editor's note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Question: What prompted this study?
Answer: When I began collecting data on dating among older adults in Arizona, I started noticing that many people brought up political differences unprompted, often as a deal-breaker — something they just couldn’t tolerate.
The first interviews took place around the 2022 midterm elections and Trump’s announcement of a third run for president, which seemed to stir up concerns about political polarization and division.
I was surprised at how important this was, especially for women. So my co-author and I decided to explore how older adults were thinking about political views in their potential partners, especially in light of rising political polarization.
Q: Has politics always been a factor in dating? If not, why now?
A: Certainly, for many people, shared political values matter. Some of the research in political science, for example, suggests that young people who are dating to eventually get married and have children likely want shared political views to ensure they can pass on values they care about to their kids.
But it might matter more in times of political polarization, like we’ve seen in the U.S. over the last decade. Many of my respondents made this connection, explaining that things felt different now than they did when they dated in young adulthood. One respondent told me she felt like “there wouldn’t have even been an issue because politics wasn’t infused in our lives like it is now.”
Q: What were your findings?
A: Some older adults expressed really strong preferences for shared politics. These were often people who held strong personal political identities, so it may be that they associate their politics with core values and really want to have that in common with a partner. This was true even though, as some admitted, this could really limit who they could date.
Quite a number of respondents were willing to be open-minded about a partner’s politics, especially since that might offer a better dating pool. These folks said if they could overlook these kinds of differences, they might have a better shot of finding someone.
But there was an interesting caveat to their open-mindedness that was exclusive to women. They didn’t want a male partner who forced them to believe his political views. It was fascinating to see the kinds of language that women used to discuss this. While they didn’t feel strongly about what side of the aisle a partner’s views were, women worried about having views “shoved,” “pushed” or “forced” on them — something that none of the male respondents worried about.
What was striking was that older adults worried explicitly about extremist political views. While some were concerned about left-leaning views, especially around COVID-19, and a few worried about “wingnuts on either wing,” the vast majority of respondents who held these concerns were turned off by what they saw as the rise of right-wing extremist views in Arizona.
Q: Why does the study only focus on older adults?
A: This study is part of a larger study I conducted on dating and romance in later life. I wanted to look specifically at what older adults thought about politics and political differences because the existing research has only looked at young people, and many parts of dating look different across the life course.
Q: How do political differences impact dating?
A: Many of the men and women I interviewed saw dating as a way to have fun and enjoy companionship, and arguing about politics really takes the fun out of that. Several respondents ended dates or budding relationships because they or their partner couldn’t agree to disagree. While some really didn’t mind what a potential partner thought about politics, they didn’t want to spend their time fighting with someone or having to listen to a partner’s political complaints.
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