Among Republicans, 82% say they have a close friend who is a member of the other party, compared with 64% of Democrats, according to the NBC News poll.

Among Republicans, 82% say they have a close friend who is a member of the other party, compared with 64% of Democrats, according to the NBC News poll.

Despite a polarized, partisan political environment, most voters who consider themselves a member of a party say they have a close friend on the other side of the aisle, according to the latest national NBC News poll.

Self-identified moderate Republicans (87%) were 8 points more likely to say they have a close Democratic friend than conservative Republicans (79%). By the same token, moderate Democrats (78%) were 21 points more likely to say they have a close friend who is a Republican than liberal Democrats (57%).

Among voters categorized as “core” GOP supporters, 77% have a close Democratic friend, while 90% of “soft” Republican voters do. There was a similar gap between “core” Democratic voters, at 57%, and “soft” Democrats, at 73%, when it comes to having a close Republican friend.

  • binarytobis@lemmy.world
    5·
    12 hours ago

    It’s weird that this never applies in reverse. It’s always “Democrats need to be more accommodating.”

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      It’s part of Murc’s Law. It’s just a given that Republicans can and will behave like broken individuals with psychopathy and arrested development and are completely incapable of getting any better or growing up. It is the responsibility of Democrats to reach out and coddle and “compromise” with such types, even if the Republicans’ policies have the end game of these people being erased or imprisoned or excommunicated or treated like second-class citizens…

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc's_law

      The idea reflects an asymmetry in press coverage, where Democrats are assumed to be responsible for policy outcomes and are expected to compromise, while Republicans are often portrayed as passive or structurally constrained. As Paul Campos summarizes, “American politics operates within a frame in which the party of the government is the Democrats, while the Republicans are the party opposed to the government. This holds without regard to which party happens to be in power at any moment … The Democrats think the government should do things, and the Republicans think it shouldn’t…”[4] He also describes the dynamic by noting that “Republicans are like rocks rolling down hill or perhaps sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are, so there’s no point in holding them responsible for anything, since they could not do ottherwise [sic]”.[4]

      I’ve been noticing this for decades and could not put my finger on what I objected to, and now that it is named and properly described, holy shit, you just cannot unsee it. It’s not confined to the press, it is EVERYWHERE, all the time, and those finger-wagging nannies that try to pull this shit look all the stupider for it now that it has a name…