While all Americans are likely to prefer socializing with like-minded people, the right tends to cross lines more often than the left

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My wife and I recently had dinner with some conservative friends of ours. The next day, we attended a barbecue with liberal friends. The two groups know each other and socialized together not so very long ago, but have largely been separated in recent years by the wedge of politics, with my wife and I serving as an occasional libertarian bridge. I wish I could describe this division as a social oddity of my circle of friends, but it’s an all-too-common feature of polarized American life.

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Only 29 per cent of Americans would be willing to help someone who “strongly disagreed with me or my point of view,” according to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer. Even fewer — 23 per cent — would be willing to live in the same neighbourhood with those who disagree and just 20 per cent would be willing to have them as co-workers. “Ideology becomes identity” is how Edelman summarizes the findings.

That aversion to cross-partisan connections has real-world consequences. During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to Pew Research, roughly four-in-10 registered voters who supported either Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump said “they do not have a single close friend who supports the other major party candidate.”

Two years later, one-in-five Americans polled by the New York Times and Siena College said that political disagreements had a negative impact on their........

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