New Study: The Politics of Online Dating

According to a new study, people don't like to talk politics in their online dating profiles.

The study, published in the August edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, revealed that participants were more likely to admit being overweight than to disclose their political beliefs. Only 14% included "political interests" among their favorite interests. Politics ranked 23rd out of 27 categories identified by singles as topics of interest, just below "video games" and slightly above "book club."

Of those who did list politics as an interest, a whopping 57 percent identified themselves as "middle of the road," compared to 16 percent as "conservative" and 9 percent "liberal."

Older daters and those with higher educations were more likely to share a definitive political preference, such as "very liberal" or "ultra conservative." Women were also 8 percent less likely to say they were interested in politics.

Considering the polarized political climate of America today, it makes sense that daters might not want to share their political beliefs in their profiles, or even discuss politics in the first few dates. It can be a controversial topic, and therefore a turn-off. You could be rejected or reject someone else before even meeting each other. When people don't share the same political leanings, virtual strangers tend to view each other in a less positive way. Some singles refuse to date across party lines altogether.

Even though James Carville and Mary Matalin have made their political differences work in their relationship, not everyone can follow suit. The majority of married couples, about 70%, have similar political beliefs.

Many daters prefer to keep initial conversation and online dating profiles free from controversial topics such as religion, politics, and exes - saving those topics for when the relationship develops.

My advice? Don't bring up who you're going to vote for in the next election until you've had a couple of dates. If you're interested in someone, discussing politics is part of trying to get to know him or her better, but it doesn't have to be the center of attention on a first date. If you feel compelled to talk about politics from the beginning because it's the deciding factor in choosing your dates, then I'd advise looking at niche dating sites like DemocraticSingles.net or DatingRepublicans.com, depending on your preferences.

Casey Klofstad, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami, and co-authors Peter Hatemi, a genetic epidemiologist at Penn State University, and Rose McDermott, a political science professor at Brown, collected their data from a random sampling of 2,944 profiles from 313 randomly selected zip codes off a free dating site in the fall of 2009. The results accounted for sex, age, race, education and income.