A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that rifts between friends and family over politics in the 2016 election has only gotten worse since Donald Trump’s historic win over Hillary Clinton in November.
The online poll, taken by 6,426 people between Dec. 27 and Jan. 18, found that about 39 percent respondents argued with close friends or family, and 13 percent ended their relationships because over disagreements about politics.
Poll results also showed 16 percent stopped talking to their loved ones and 17 percent blocked them on social media because of their views on the election.
Reuters pointed to people like retired California prison guard Gayle McCormick, a self-proclaimed “Democrat leaning toward socialist” who is separating from her conservative husband of 22 years after he “betrayed” her by voicing support for Trump.
“It totally undid me that he could ever vote for Trump,” McCormick, 73, told the news service.
“I felt like I had been fooling myself,” said McCormick, who did not divorce her husband but instead moved to her own apartment. “It opened up areas between us I had not faced before. I realized how far I had gone in my life to accept things I would have never accepted when I was younger.”
Disagreements about politics are common during presidential elections, but Reuters contends fractures from “the most divisive election in modern U.S. politics” have not healed as they have in the past.
“The Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll shows it has worsened, suggesting a widening of the gulf between Republicans and Democrats and a hardening of ideological positions that sociologists and political scientists say increases distrust in the government and will make political compromise more difficult,” according to the news service.
When compared with a pre-election poll conducted in October, arguments are up 6 percentage points, those who reportedly stopped talking to loved ones is up one percent, and those who ended relationships over politics was also up one percent.
And the data suggests those who voted for Clinton were more spiteful, as more Clinton supporters stopped talking to family for supporting Trump than vice versa.
Dayton, Ohio Clinton supporter Sue Koren, for example, unfriended “maybe about 50” people on Facebook for supporting Trump, and she now barely talks with her two Trump-supporting sons.
“Life is not what it was before the election,” the 57-year-old said. “It’s my anger, my frustration, my disbelief. They think our current president is a hero and I think he’s a nut.”
New Orleans radio producer George Ingmire, 48, is in a similar situation. Ingmire broke off ties with uncle who helped him through his father suicide over the uncle’s support for Trump.
“We had some back and forth and it just got really deep, really ugly,” he said. “I don’t see this ever being fixed.”
Of course, the election wasn’t so divisive for most folks.
More than half of respondents did not stop talking to family, block them from social media, or end relationships over political differences. And more people did not argue about politics – 40 percent – than those who did – 39 percent.
And about 45 percent of people who took the Reuters poll said they made new friends because of the election, compared to about 21 percent who did not.
East Galesburg, Illinois retiree Sani Corbin, for instance, told Reuters she bonded with new friends over their mutual support for Clinton.
“We talk all the time now,” she said. “I would say that’s a plus from the election.”
Others, like Trump-supporting retired tour company operator Dennis Conner, of St. Charles, Missouri, said they’ve learned that avoiding potentially charged political conversations with opposing family members is the best policy.
“We don’t have to talk about politics,” he said.
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