Love In The Time Of Politics
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Hi, this is Seth from Dallas, Texas, and I'm on my way to the grand opening of the first museum exhibit I've ever helped curate, which features photos I found of a lesbian wedding in 1918. This podcast was recorded at 1.22 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, June 12, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be taking pride as an emerging gay archivist.

I want to know all the history of that. Where is the exhibit as well? Yeah, so belated mazel tov to that couple. Very true.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Alayna Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And today on the show, all's fair in love and in politics. You know, people say the personal is political, but sometimes the political gets very personal. And Alayna, you've been reporting on this recently.

The ways that politics are shaping the ways young people think about relationships, especially in this time of deep political polarization. Tell us what you found. We all just want to find love, Sarah. That's really the top line. Basically, I got the idea to do this story because a week or so before the election, I was walking around Penn State's campus and I met this couple, Trevor Keller and Rhiannon Costanzo. I stopped them right on the street and I...

I found out Trevor was going to mail his ballot. And the more I talked to them, the more I realized they had different political views. Costanzo had voted for Trump and Keller was going to vote for Harris. Despite this big difference, they told me just it wasn't a deal breaker for them. They don't talk about politics a lot, but they also don't shy away from it. Here's how Costanzo kind of explained it to me. I think it's more important to get to know the individual person and why, like what things in their life have shaped those views.

I kept in touch with them and we talked a few months ago now and the two are still going strong. You know, they're every once in a while they talk about what's going on in the administration. There are still disagreements, but they say they still also have a lot in common. I kind of like this idea. Like Elena stops people on the street to talk to them about

love and love politics. But I love, I feel like you talk to these people, right? And then didn't they kind of end up being unicorns in some way? Like they're, it's not like everyone is out there like doing this and being like, politics just doesn't matter to me. Right, exactly. And unfortunately, what they have is less and less common. You know, I bullied Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent to putting a question in

a recent NPR PBS News Marist poll that we did about this. The question asked how important it was for Americans to date or marry someone with the same political views. And basically, it doesn't matter much to most people unless you look at it by age. And then...

It does matter, specifically for young people. Yeah, break that down. What's different from group to group? Among 18 to 29-year-olds, 6 and 10 feel like it's important compared to just a third of those over 60. So it's a pretty stark difference that happens as you go to these different phases of life. You met this couple that doesn't care that much about their political differences. But as we've said, that isn't necessarily the case, especially for younger couples.

So for those that it matters for, why do they say it matters? When we got the polling back, I talked to some of the participants. And the bottom line for folks on the left, on the right, was that politics is culture for them. And so...

So for these folks, like if they disagree on politics, one woman told me in Pennsylvania that that's like a moral difference to her. It's about values. Right, right. Another woman in Texas, a Republican, she told me that, yeah, the politics is the culture. And she also said, you know, she watched her parents who had different political views. It did not work.

for them. And that resonated with her. She said, you know, these things come up when you start to raise a family or get older and you grow in or grow apart in that. People really kind of drew the line on this as a no-brainer. Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting, too, is like you've got Gen Z has a lot of very specific political ideas. But I also think when you look at the age breakdown,

I'm also just thinking about why people are dating at different stages in life. And I was reading a little bit of political science research on this before we did the pod. And it seems like the other thing about young people is they are dating with the intention of starting a family and specifically thinking about the values that they want to pass on to their kids. And I think that was very interesting when you think about whether people are thinking about politics.

Yeah, it's not just red or blue. It's about kind of who you are and what you stand for in the world, at least in a lot of people's minds. 100%. And I mean, Miles, this doesn't just apply to dating and romance and marriage, right? I mean, isn't this part of a larger cultural shift toward people sort of self-selecting who they want to be around all the time?

along political lines? Definitely. I mean, this is something that we've talked a lot about the last few decades, something colloquially called the big sort, which was a phrase coined by the author Bill Bishop. But this idea that more and more Americans are starting to group themselves geographically with people who think like them, right? And this has only escalated since Bishop's book came out. The University of Virginia kind of did an update to kind of look how this has changed in recent years. In 2004, there was like a little over

200 of America's 3,100 roughly counties that voted in sort of landslide fashion in that presidential election. And then just

a few elections later in 2016, that number had basically tripled or more than tripled. And so we're just seeing- Which suggests the people are moving to be near people who think like them. And I think, I haven't seen an update on those numbers, but I have to imagine that COVID also escalated that because we've heard a lot of anecdotal stories about people moving away from places where they don't agree with the kind of politics of their state. So we've got fewer and fewer essentially purple places. And I think, yeah, the last thing I would just say is like,

The dating thing ties into that, right? I mean, I feel like if you're living around a lot of people who think like you, you're more open to the idea of basically saying, I can screen for this because you're not really cutting off a lot of potential avenues because most of the people around you think like you. Alina, I want to go back to this idea of generations because as the data suggests and as your reporting has indicated, this is something that's kind of new. I mean, younger people seem to care about this more than older generations.

What do you know about why that shift has taken place? I mean, in kind of going off of what Miles just said, it's a priority shift. Things that mattered 40 years ago or even a few decades ago may be different for young people today who have grown up in the last 20 years of largely prioritizing

political division, a time of just intense cultural reckonings. I talked to Dan Cox about this. He's a pollster and researcher with the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative-leaning Washington think tank. And he's done a lot of research on gender and some on dating. And he told me that, you know,

We've just seen this shift change in how people date. We do know from some of our past research that younger people are more inclined to seek out that information. A lot of people in previous generations, they report that they didn't even know the politics of the person they were dating for a good long time because it just wasn't as relevant as other information. You know, do you belong to the same church?

What kind of work do you do? Also, another really interesting thing he said is in the age of these dating apps, Miles, you talked about the like physical echo chamber, but like a dating app, you can literally choose not to go on a date with someone if they have in their bio conservative or liberal. And, you know, Cox said politics has become in some ways a shorthand for character and values and people can literally swipe anything.

and make a decision on that now. So on top of just culture changing because of politics, like a lot of other factors have changed the way that young people think today. All right, it's time for a break. We'll have more in just a moment. This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

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And we're back. I want to just zoom out a little bit. Young people are expressing this more pronounced preference for dating people who share their politics. At the same time, though, younger people, you know, both now and historically, don't tend to vote in the same numbers that older folks do.

Miles, you cover voting. On the one hand, it seems that voting is less important to younger Americans. But at the same time, we're seeing that politics are shaping some pretty important life decisions. I just wonder what you make of that. Yeah, I feel like the impulse to see all of this data and any data that points to broader polarization is that it's bad news, right? It's like this doesn't seem good if we're dividing ourselves in this way. But I actually...

kind of have a positive spin on all of this a little bit. This is classic Miles Parks. I'll take a positive spin. I just feel like, hear me out, hear me out. So I feel like, you know, I know you were able to get one question in this poll, but I almost want like a separate poll that breaks this down in a lot of different ways. I have a lot of poll questions. But one of the questions is,

how this breaks down based on how politically active people are. I think my hypothesis is that the more politically active and engaged you are, if you're reading the news every single day and you have hot takes on voting policy or foreign aid or whatever, that you are going to care more about how your partner feels about those things. And so I guess I'm wondering if

If younger people are more politically engaged, then are they naturally more inclined to care about this? And I think that is actually a net positive because I think we want to live in a society where people are really engaged with politics and stuff like that. So I don't know. There's some part of me that thinks maybe this isn't all bad. That was a very meta answer, Miles, I feel like. And I mean, I kind of agree because I was going to say, yeah, young people vote at a lower rate. You could argue that means they're less interested, but also young people in

in some ways, have always been at a disadvantage with voting. You know, they're new to the system. They're learning how this works. They haven't been around as long. But these young people have been thrust into the political world, whether they like it or not, every time you open your Instagram app or you go on the street and you see a protest. And so I think, Miles, that your point is really, really strong.

strong. Also, going back to that couple that I met in Pennsylvania, I think that is a key part of what has made their relationship work as they acknowledge that politics is not really their priority. They don't talk about it all the time. Yes, there are some things that still really matter to them. And those are the things they talk about and respect each other on. And off

and agree on because that's the other thing. Gen Z isn't married to a political party. And so these two people could have voted separate ways and still have a lot in common. And that's why this generation keeps me up at night. And I have so many thoughts and I will keep talking about them until I'm blue in the face. Yeah, that seems really important. They are more independent. They obviously care about politics, but, you know, both parties want to turn out new voters and have been working on that in various ways for quite some time. Democrats, we know, are especially worried about this, particularly when it comes to young

Yeah. I mean, last fall, Democrats lost ground with young people in general, but particularly young men. Those are people under 30. You know, in 2020, Joe Biden won the election.

won young men by 11 percentage points, according to exit polling. In 2024, that group shifted and Trump won them very narrowly. That's a big difference than young women who also shifted right, but by a few percentage points. And former Vice President Harris still won the group by double digits. And so it's been one of the big alarm bells that went off for the party when looking at how their base did or didn't

What do we know about where Democrats are at with that? I mean, we know there's been a lot of consternation since the election, but what do we know about where Democrats are at with that?

What do they see as possible solutions for winning over those younger male voters? For some Democrats, you know, that's meant really putting a lot of research into the public and letting people sit with how a lot of young men are feeling right now. There's this new report that was released from this group, the Speaking with American Men Project.

known as SAM. And it's an effort that is intended to help Democrats better research and connect with young men. And the report drew on 30 different focus groups with young men and a national survey and found that, you know, a lot of young people feel misunderstood and not heard by the political system, by Democrats or Republicans.

Here's how John De La Volpe, one of the co-founders of the group, explained the findings and where Democrats stand. One of the great takeaways from 30 focus groups over the last several months is that this is a generation of young men. They're not lost at Democrat Party. You know, they're not apathetic.

And if we care about our democracy, everyone needs to be respected and everyone needs to feel that their voice can be heard. And I'll just say in a completely other way, we're starting to see independently all of these different prominent emerging voices within the Democratic Party, potential 2028 presidential candidates, you could say. California Governor Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg,

Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer come out with policy proposals catered to young men or going on shows, media platforms that have high listenership of young men. And I mean, all of these things are happening at the same time. So I think it's something we're definitely going to keep an eye out for. I feel like there's all these strategies, but I think the biggest thing that I'm

everyone's searching for is finding a way to give hope to young men. And I know that sounds kind of odd, but if you think about the fact that we all grow up with this idea of wanting either to emulate or do better than our fathers or our grandfathers, and in a society that is getting significantly less patriarchal, ideally, I think it's really hard to say to young men, like, your life will noticeably be better than it was for previous generations when all of these other developments are happening. And I think

politicians are still just trying to find a way to be able to communicate both those two messages at the same time. And I'll just say that in the 2024 campaign, when I was following both Trump and Harris, that was kind of Trump's message. And that's what we heard conservatives talk about, because obviously we know that a lot of policies that Democrats talk about are popular with young people. But the Republican message was simple. It was we want to give you a life that

that is better than your parents' life. We want to help you get a house and have a family. And it was simple, and it worked. All right, well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And I hope you find love.

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