Shortly after moving to Liverpool, 26-year-old Sally Galula went on a date with a man she’d met on Hinge. She was feeling quite optimistic about it – until she arrived. “Before I even had the chance to sit down, he said he’d seen my Instagram story,” Galula tells GLAMOUR. She had posted a picture of the book she was reading: Heart of Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain, a seminal account of the lives of Black women living in 20th century Britain. Galula’s date was unimpressed. “He said he hoped I wasn’t ‘one of those feminist types’,” she recalls. “I left before finishing my first drink.”
Finding your political voice at nineteen is not easy, particularly if you’re a woman.
For many young women like Galula, different political beliefs are increasingly a dating dealbreaker, especially in light of the looming general election. A recent survey conducted by Tinder found that 71% of Gen Z say they wouldn’t date someone with different political views to their own, while separate research published by YouGov found that women are less likely to be open to dating across the political divide. In addition, according to Bumble’s 2024 dating trends report, 1 in 3 women on the app believe it is a turn-off if someone they are dating is not aware of current societal issues.
For previous generations, asking a date upfront about their voting history and opinions on immigration might have been regarded as tactless or even rude. But things are very different for Gen Z and Millennials today, with popular apps like Tinder and Hinge even allowing users to filter out profiles based on political beliefs. “I will ask my dates straight up about their politics on the first date, so I know whether to rule them out or not,” Galula says.
“I will ask my dates straight up about their politics on the first date."
She stresses that she would struggle to see a future with anyone who she didn’t align with politically. “I would like to be a parent one day, so when dating I always ask myself: could I raise a child with this person? Would I be proud of my child if they ended up having the exact same political beliefs as my partner?” she says. “If the answer is no, then I wouldn’t be able to see a future with them.”
Tara Prasad, 25, is another young woman whose politics colour her dating choices. “I don’t date Tories,” she says, adding that she wouldn’t want to date anyone who doesn’t believe all people should be treated fairly and equally. 28-year-old Lily O’Farrell has a similar ‘no Tories’ rule. “Politics is the most important factor which informs my dating choices,” she says. “I couldn’t date a Conservative – I just don’t think I can see myself growing old with someone who has such big ideological differences to me.”
2024's biggest dating trend.
Liv Lever, 24, describes herself as “socially liberal but fiscally conservative”. As the director of Beyond Blue, a thinktank for young Conservatives, she is also keen to find a like-minded partner. “I’m picky as it is but, it is extremely important to me that someone I’m dating values and supports my passions,” she says, adding that men are often “intimidated” by her. “They often have an issue with me having a strong set of opinions.”
This approach to dating is hardly unusual – whether we realise it or not, the majority of us end up seeking out partners with views similar to our own. “Screening a potential date for their political beliefs and values is really common, even if it’s something we often do subconsciously rather than consciously,” says feminist sociologist Dr Briony Hannell. “Longstanding evidence suggests that successful long-term romantic relationships are usually characterised by political similarity rather than divergence.” She points to the sociological theory of ‘homophily’, which has long argued that people have a natural tendency to bond with others who are similar to them.
It's time to ‘Give an X’.
It’s possible this is part of the reason why young, straight and bisexual women seem to be so disillusioned with dating men right now. Galula, Prasad, and O’Farrell all describe themselves as progressive, as are growing numbers of young women in the UK. But conversely, young men are becoming more conservative. Data published in the Financial Times earlier this year pointed to an emerging “global gender divide”, wherein young men and young women are becoming increasingly politically polarised.
While other studies have cast doubt on whether there really is such a yawning ideological chasm between young men and women, the fact remains that women are more likely to be progressive than men: notably, data from the British Election Study shows that the 2019 election saw the largest difference in men’s and women’s average levels of support for Labour and the Conservatives since the early 1970s.
“Screening a potential date for their political beliefs and values is really common, even if it’s something we often do subconsciously rather than consciously."
“Political polarisation and especially given the rise of right-wing reactionary discourses waging a ‘war on woke’ – so, on women, LGBT people, racial minorities, feminists, and so on – has made this long-standing practice of screening a date’s politics more conscious and explicit,” Dr Hannell explains. She also highlights that young women today are also grappling with the backlash to feminism’s success, with misogynistic figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson looming large in the popular imagination. “Seeking broad political compatibility is one strategy that young women can use to mitigate risk and vulnerability in their romantic and sexual relationships,” she says.
None of this is to say that young women are becoming more narrow-minded or unrealistic when it comes to dating. “I don’t need someone to exactly prescribe to all of my opinions,” Prasad stresses. “I’m happy to date people that fall in different places on the left-wing spectrum. They can vote for different parties – I’m not opposed to people that vote Lib Dem.” O’Farrell feels similarly. “The person I date doesn’t have to be a member of the Labour Party – they just need to have a similar moral compass to me,” she says. She adds that she often prefers going on dates with men who have different views to her own. “I’ve dated men who agree with me on every single thing and it’s so boring. You have nothing to talk about. It’s dull – and I don’t think you grow as a person.”
In the first instalment of GLAMOUR's coverage of London's mayoral elections, we spoke to Sadiq Khan about his plan for Londoners. Next up? We sat down with his main rival, Susan Hall, to see if she's presenting a credible alternative. Who will earn your vote?
O’Farrell has even briefly dated a Tory before. “He grew up in a family that was on quite a low income, then he had made quite a lot of money as an adult and wanted to keep a hold of that money,” she says. The relationship didn’t work out, but O’Farrell says she has no regrets and was interested to hear another perspective. “It’s always really good to hear other people’s opinions. When else do you get to sit down with a stranger and hear their life story?”
Dr Kirstie Hewlett, a Research Fellow at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, says that learning to ‘disagree well’ is actually a key social skill. “It’s important to learn to disagree well with people who don’t think like us, and a danger in staying in silos – and that’s as true for individual relationships as it is for broader society,” she says. “Where we really take the time to understand what people think, why and where competing views are coming from, we can start to build empathetic, constructive conservations where we can find common ground.”
Lever adds that she noticed many people writing “no Tories” on their dating app profiles during the 2019 election, and that she expects this to happen again in the lead up to the next general election. “Division and intolerance are never ideal at any time, but during an election it can fuel horrendous amounts of abuse on all sides of the political divide, which nobody wants,” she says. But she doesn’t take it personally when she sees people ice out Tories on dating apps. “If someone has something on their dating app profile which says they don’t want Tories, it doesn’t really bother me as that is their prerogative.”
Of course, there are limits to how far our open-mindedness can go. O’Farrell stresses that she could never date anyone who was ‘racist, sexist, or selfish”, and that as a woman, it’s vital her partner is a feminist too. Galula feels similarly and adds that as a “woman of colour with many queer friends” she’s especially careful with who she chooses to date. “A lot of young men on the right have become radicalised and ultimately, I am trying to keep myself safe,” she says. “I am an ethnic minority and if your voting history reflects a hate against people like me, what kind of partner would you be to me?”
“It’s important to learn to disagree well with people who don’t think like us, and a danger in staying in silos – and that’s as true for individual relationships as it is for broader society."
It’s important to keep in mind that politics isn’t some abstract, intangible thing. As Dr Hannell says, the feminist mantra “the personal is political” is growing ever more pertinent. Politics doesn’t exist in the land of hypothetical debate – governments can roll out policies which have the power to shape people’s entire lives, and marginalised groups such as women, queer people, and people of colour are often on the sharp end of this. With this in mind, it tracks that so many of us aren’t able to merely “agree to disagree” with potential partners who have extremely different views to our own.
It's like quiet quitting, but for your love life.
Should we make a conscious effort to get out of our echo chambers every once in a while? Absolutely. But is it possible form a healthy, long lasting, and fulfilling relationship with someone who doesn’t believe women don’t deserve an absolute right to bodily autonomy, or that immigrants are “ruining the country”, or that climate change doesn’t really matter? Everyone has to make that decision for themselves, but in my view: absolutely not.
