OkCupid Adds Political Questions Ahead of the Election
Contributed by: kellyseal on Monday, November 04 2024 @ 03:26 pm
Last modified on Monday, November 04 2024 @ 03:31 pm
OkCupid has added a range of new politically-focused questions to its platform along with politically-themed badges ahead of the 2024 US election.
According to CNN, the new questions focus on voter behavior and help users choose more compatible profiles. Some questions include: “Are you voting in the 2024 presidential election?” and “What’s the most important issue to you in the 2024 presidential election?”
Other questions refer to whether singles are willing to bridge the political divide, such as: “Is it a dealbreaker if your date is voting for a different candidate than you in the 2024 presidential election?”
The questions this year have shifted away from knowledge about the candidates and policy questions like: “Do you believe climate change is real?” and are now more focused on voter participation in general. Michael Kaye, the director of brand marketing and communications for OkCupid told CNN[*1] : “We really wanted to be mindful and careful with the questions that we were adding to the app and not adding any questions that felt like we were splintering people apart further than they already have.”
This election is evenly split among Republicans and Democrats, and polls show it will be a close race between VP Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. While OkCupid users have tended to be liberal, and the app has catered to this population in the past, new data has shifted the company’s marketing and user experience strategies. In a recent analysis of user data, 44 percent chose “other” when asked if they were “politically liberal” “moderate,” or “conservative,” according to OkCupid.
“Our thought process with our matching questions,” said Kaye to CNN, “is if we’re talking about it with our friends, if we’re talking about it with our family or coworkers, most likely people are talking about it on their dates.”
OkCupid recently surveyed its users about the upcoming election and found that a majority (84 percent) of users are politically engaged and said that voting is a big turn-on. In fact, those users who advertise with a badge that they are registered to vote get 15 percent more Likes, 18 percent more conversations, and 12 percent more matches, according to OkCupid’s blog[*2] .
And more OkCupid users are open to debates and discussions with their dates. In fact, a whopping 69 percent said it’s not a deal breaker if their date votes for a different candidate in the 2024 election, and 61 percent said they could date someone who’s voting for the opposing candidate. Gen Z daters were more open then both Millennials and Gen X daters, according to OkCupid’s blog.