“Dating right now is just walking on eggshells, honestly,” Sam, a 25-year-old graduate student in D.C., tells me.
He said he hides his pro-life, non-MAGA, traditional Republican leanings by default—out of fear his dates, who are almost always on the left, might ghost him.
“You just have to assume that most girls are progressive and constantly try to make sure you don’t say the wrong thing,” he told me. “On first dates I’m usually just trying to gauge where they’re coming from while obfuscating my views.”
Sam isn’t alone.
Young singles today are facing a demographic disaster: while women have made a hard left turn in recent years, their male counterparts have taken a hard right one—with many refusing to date across party lines.
A new report in the Financial Times shows that American women aged 18–30 are 30 percent more liberal than men their age. According to another survey, a whopping 54 percent of women say they won’t date a conservative, and just listening to Joe Rogan or refusing to watch the Barbie movie is a red flag.
It’s a trend sweeping the world. In the UK, Germany, and South Korea, men are forking right while women head in the opposite direction. According to the Financial Times, the #MeToo movement was the catalyst, because it gave rise to “fiercely feminist values among young women who felt empowered to speak out against long-running injustices.” But seven years on, the divide between men and women in the wake of #MeToo has become calloused, creating new political lines.
As a result, the statistical odds of finding a Gen Z partner with compatible views is nosediving. Daters are being forced to choose between feeling ideologically compromised or going without sex.
As a 23-year-old woman with openly libertarian views, I’ve seen the problem firsthand on the New York City dating scene—but from the flipside. I’ve been told I’m a “breath of fresh air” by men who feel they can finally let their political hair down on a date. At last, a living, breathing woman who won’t be offended!
“I’m socially liberal,” a venture capitalist I met on Hinge once confessed to me, glancing nervously around the room to make sure nobody was listening before leaning in for the zinger: “But I’m fiscally conservative.”
He scoured my eyes for recognition, as though we were dissidents in Soviet Russia. Except we were two moderates splitting a plate of overpriced tuna tartare in a trendy West Village bar.
I wasn’t surprised that a man who works in finance is a fan of capitalism, but I understood his relief.