Friendships have ended. Family dinners turned silent. Coworker’s small talk dried up. For 37 percent of Americans, politics didn’t just create tension — it ended relationships entirely.
A study published in PNAS Nexus surveyed 3,791 people across four datasets and found that political breakups now affect more than a third of U.S. adults. Not arguments. Not awkward pauses. Full breakups — friendships, family ties, romantic partnerships, coworker relationships. Gone.
Most people who reported a political breakup lost more than one relationship. Friendships bore the brunt: 62 percent said they’d lost a friend, 40 percent a family member, 29 percent a coworker, and 10 percent a romantic partner.
Researchers Mertcan Güngör and Peter H. Ditto from UC Irvine didn’t just count the casualties — they tracked who’s doing the walking. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to report a political breakup, and among those who’d had one, 66 percent of Democrats said they ended it. Only 27 percent of Republicans said the same.
Here’s the link since credit matters: Politics Is Destroying American Friendships, And It’s Getting Worse.
Why Friendships Are the First to Go
Friendships sit in a strange middle ground. Close enough that politics comes up. Not structurally bound like marriages or family ties. No shared mortgage, no kids, no decades of obligation holding things together. When a friendship hits a hard political edge, there’s less reason to stay.
The study found that 46 percent of Democrats reported a political breakup, compared to 29 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of Independents. Even after adjusting for partisan intensity and demographics, Democrats were still more likely to report losing someone.
The timeline matters. Of those who’d had a political breakup, 96 percent placed their most painful split in 2016 or later. Presidential election years spiked the numbers. After the 2016 election, about 14 percent of Americans reported losing relationships because of their race. Five and a half months after the 2024 election, that figure hit 18 percent.
The researchers cautioned that the evidence is limited and that election timing affects recall, but the pattern suggests the trend is accelerating rather than leveling off.
Political Breakups Breed Hostility — Or Maybe It’s the Other Way Around
People who’d lost relationships over politics felt notably colder toward the other side. On a 100-point warmth scale, those who’d had political breakups rated opposing voters nearly eight points colder than their fellow partisans who hadn’t experienced a split. The hostility wasn’t aimed at politicians or media figures — it was aimed at ordinary people on the other side.
Among those who initiated the breakup themselves, the coldness was even sharper.
Political breakups also distorted people’s views of what opponents actually believe. In a 2017 survey, Democrats who’d had breakups overestimated the percentage of Republicans who agreed with white nationalists by about 12.6 percentage points more than Democrats without breakups. Republicans who’d had breakups overestimated the percentage of Democrats who thought most white people are racist by about 14.6 percentage points more.
The researchers offered two explanations: losing someone with different views removes one of the few windows into why the other side thinks as it does, and, after a split, people may lean into exaggerated media portrayals to justify their decision.
Because all studies were snapshots rather than tracking the same people over time, the team couldn’t determine whether hostility comes before a breakup or results from it. They suspect it runs both ways — a cycle in which hostility leads to breakups that generate even more hostility.
The Structural Problem No One’s Talking About
The study didn’t just document breakups. It flagged a structural problem: as Americans retreat into politically like-minded circles, the cross-party relationships that research has linked to greater tolerance continue to disappear.
“Given the role of exposure to opposing views in building political tolerance, these ‘political breakups’ are a troubling sign for the health of a democracy,” the researchers wrote. “And given the importance of relationships for well-being, they have implications for the health of citizens as well.”
Translation: when people stop knowing anyone on the other side, they stop understanding them. And when they stop understanding them, they stop tolerating them.
The data came from online opt-in panels, which tend to attract people more interested in politics than the general population, so the breakup estimates may be inflated. All data were self-reported, raising concerns about memory and motivation. Earlier breakups may be harder to recall, and friendships often dissolve gradually rather than through a clear conversation, meaning the person on the receiving end may not realize the relationship ended over politics.
Social desirability may also play a role: the researchers found some evidence suggesting Republicans may underreport breakups while Democrats may over-report them.
Still, the pattern holds across four separate datasets. Political breakups are real, they’re rising, and they’re leaving people more hostile and more isolated than before.
What Happens When the Bridges Burn
Four in ten Americans have lost someone over politics. Most lost more than one. Friendships are ending faster than family ties, and the people walking away are more likely to be Democrats — though Republicans who’ve had breakups report the same distorted views and the same coldness toward the other side.
The study couldn’t say whether hostility causes breakups or breakups cause hostility. Probably both. What it did say: the more people lose relationships over politics, the less they understand the people they’re losing — and the less they want to.