Singles Will Forgive Almost Any Difference Except Politics

ASK a single American what would end a promising date, and Kinsey Institute researchers already have the list: ten possible political dealbreakers, from not registering to vote to simply refusing to say who they support. Political identity has hardened into one of the few traits U.S. singles still will not overlook in a partner, even as they have grown far more willing to fall for someone who disagrees with them on religion, social issues or money, according to the Kinsey Institute’s 2026 Singles in America survey. Only a decade ago, differences over religion or finances quietly ended plenty of promising matches; today the same gaps barely register, while a party label increasingly does. The pattern shows up in the newest wave of the nation’s longest-running study of single life, a project Match has funded every year since 2010.

Now in its 15th year, Singles in America has surveyed more than 80,000 Americans, and the 2026 wave alone drew on roughly 5,000 single adults answering 120 questions about dating, money, family and politics. It is less a single poll than a running record of how single life has moved since 2010, one wave at a time.

The survey works by asking similar questions year after year to a fresh, demographically balanced sample of singles, so a shift in the numbers reflects the dating pool at large rather than any one person changing their mind. One of the newer question blocks lists ten things that could sink a match on political grounds alone: skipping an election, refusing to state an opinion on key issues, posting political views on social media, or simply being a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent. Respondents check off whichever apply, which turns something as fuzzy as political vibes into a number researchers can track. A separate block asks the inverse question about tolerance: whether someone could fall in love with a partner who holds a very different view on religion, social issues, finances or politics itself.

Where the Walls Came Down

On three of those fronts, tolerance has climbed sharply since 2019. On the political front, it has barely moved, and the parallel dealbreaker list suggests why: a party label is doing work that religion and money no longer do.

Willingness to fall for someone with a very different religious view rose from 43% of singles in 2019 to 57% in 2026, and the same openness on social issues climbed from 44% to 56%. Attitudes toward money followed an identical path, up from 49% to 56% over the same stretch. Political differences, by contrast, changed little across those years, and Kinsey Institute researchers report that ruling someone out for their party affiliation has instead grown more common since 2015, especially among Gen Z, a generational split other 2026 surveys have also picked up. The direction is not new: in 2013, only 17% of Americans called political differences a major problem for a couple, a figure that has climbed steadily since, according to an analysis the Survey Center on American Life published in 2020.

Dr. Amanda Gesselman, a senior research scientist at the Kinsey Institute and a co-lead on the study, reads the wider shift as singles loosening their grip on old templates for what a relationship should look like. Singles, she says, are “becoming more flexible regarding what a good relationship can look like,” as old milestones lose their grip on what a relationship is supposed to include.

The Republican Penalty

The dealbreaker list itself is oddly specific, and the numbers it produces are uneven in a telling way. In the 2026 wave, 21% of singles said being a Republican would rule out a partner, compared with 15% who said the same about being a Democrat and just 9% who ruled out an Independent. Roughly a fifth said they would walk away from someone with no opinion on key issues at all, treating political disengagement itself as disqualifying. About 37% of singles said they carry no political dealbreakers whatsoever, a reminder that the hardening trend, real as researchers say it is, still describes a minority rather than the whole field. None of this appears in the sample the Kinsey Institute released broken out by year or by generation, so the claim that the shift is sharpest among Gen Z rests on the researchers’ reading of data not made public in full. One 2026 study in the European Sociological Review offers a possible reason the penalty runs so unevenly: it found daters use a political label mainly as a stand-in for assumed lifestyle differences and fear of family disapproval, not as a judgment of someone’s character, and that Democratic women in particular showed the strongest aversion to an opposing-party profile of any group tested.

The survey’s strength, a big and demographically balanced sample, is also its limit: it is drawn from an opt-in online panel rather than a government probability sample, and Match, the dating platform that has funded every wave since 2010, commissions and helps shape it. Kinsey Institute researchers describe the panel only as demographically representative, balanced to Census figures on age and gender, not as randomly selected, and the results have not gone through peer review.

None of this shows singles becoming more tolerant people in some general sense; it shows a different group of singles answering the same questions each year, which is a weaker claim than it sounds. A generation with more flexible views on religion could simply be replacing an older, more rigid one in the sample, rather than any single dater changing their mind.

Either way, the practical effect for dating apps and matchmakers is the same: political affiliation is emerging as a sorting variable in a way religion and income no longer are, a shift trade press covering the dating industry has already started documenting. Match, which funds this survey and profits from exactly this kind of behavioral detail, already lets users filter by traits far more mundane than party registration. If singles keep treating a political label as disqualifying while shrugging off differences in faith or finances, a checkbox for political affiliation looks less like a novelty feature and more like a response to demand. Whether that counts as singles being pickier or simply being honest about a filter they already used silently is a separate question the survey does not settle.

For now, the Kinsey Institute’s data describes a dating pool that has quietly redrawn where its walls are, keeping fewer of them up around belief and money while building a new one around party. Whether that wall gets taller, or whether the next wave of singles decides party matters less too, is exactly the kind of question repeated annual surveys are built to eventually answer.

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