Political division in America is no longer confined to Washington, and the divide seems to widen each day.
In the whirlpool of the 2024 election, across kitchen tables and college dining halls, something quietly broke. Friendships ended over yard signs, family group chats went silent, and couples who had once shared everything found they could no longer share a ballot.
While politics has always divided us on policy, today it's dividing us from each other. To understand what's happening in relationships, you first must understand what's happening in politics.
Lindsay Hoffman is a professor and researcher of political communication at the University of Delaware. She stated that over the past three decades, party identity had stopped being just a political preference, but a checklist of policies to agree with; a team to root for; a part of your personality. Scholars had a name for the more dangerous form of this shift.
Hoffman said, "It's no longer that I'm a republican and you're a democrat and we can compromise on these issues or we have to vote on these issues, it's 'you're the enemy' or 'you're not us.'"
That phenomenon, she said, is called "affective polarization." It's a term that describes division rooted not in ideology but in contempt.
Oxford research defined it as a form of polarization driven by, “distrust, dislike, and contempt across party lines.” It's less about what you believe, and more about how you feel about people who believe differently.
Hoffman said, "What we call affective polarization is not just polarization of the parties or that they’re very different from one another. But it’s that we actually think that the other party is stupid, uneducated, all of these terms that you can now think apply to people that you don't even know."
She said that identity doesn't just shape how we see ourselves, but how we see strangers, friends and even family.
"Here’s who I vote for, here’s the politicians I'm supportive of or here’s what I care, instead it's 'what does that say about me as a person' if I say that I voted for Trump or I voted for Kamala Harris? What was once just part of how we identify ourselves is now like about, it's like all you need is that one piece of information, and then you've made up your mind," said Hoffman.
Jennifer Lambe, associate professor at the University of Delaware agreed with Hoffman's point.
“I think part of what troubles me the most is that we see each other as enemies, instead of just somebody that I disagree with,” Lambe said.
And these insights were not small observations; infact they were in line with large scale data. A 2025 study conducted by the pew research center indicated growing apathy across party lines.
Three quarters of U.S. adults said that the Democratic Party made them feel frustrated, and 64% said the same about Republicans. 50% said the Democratic Party made them feel angry, and 49% on the Republican side.
Yet, only 16% said the Democratic Party made them feel hopeful, and it wasn't much better for the Republican Party with only 27% saying the GOP made them feel hopeful.
"What we call affective polarization is not just polarization of the parties or that they’re very different from one another. But it’s that we actually think that the other party is stupid, uneducated, all of these terms that you can now think apply to people that you don't even know."
Affirming this idea of rising mutual apathy — results of an informal survey of University of Delaware students matched the pew data — with 62% responding they at least somewhat agreed that opposing party is morally wrong, and 55% at least somewhat agreeing with the statement that "the opposing party to my own does not like people like me."
So, what turned ordinary disagreement into a complete personality defining trait? Lambe pointed to the current media environment.
"I think that partly it's less about the political parties and more about a way of viewing the world. One of the things is definitely our social media environment or our media environment, period. There's been a shift to not wanting to agree on the same facts as the basis from which to have a discussion. There's been a media ecosystem that supports the idea that there are alternative facts," she said.
That fractured informational ecosystem isn't accidental, Lambe said. It's by design.
"Social media is designed to keep us engaged, above all else. They want to keep our attention so they can sell our eyeballs to advertisers. What they've found is that if you evoke strong emotions, particularly anger, that keeps you engaged longer," she said, "And so, the algorithms give us stuff we already agree with, or that makes us so angry that we share it. That's not a good place from which to try to have conversations about difficult topics, to be so angry and not have a set of shared facts."
"Social media has made it so that politics has become our identity. So much so that it's like us versus them," said Scott Caplan, a professor and researcher in the Department of Interpersonal Communication at the University of Delaware.
He said, “When I was growing up, I didn't know my parents' political party. I didn't know my friends' political parties. We never talked about it. Now it's like, 'which team are you on?' And it's your whole identity. It doesn't have to be, it's just part of our identity, but social media kind of makes it the whole thing, because it's in your face all the time."
Cynthia Diefenbeck, the director of student counseling at the university, added another layer: social media doesn't just make us angrier, it makes us less real to each other.
"Algorithms will feed you more of the same, so you're getting a curated, biased version of reality. There is something called collective illusions, this idea that people believe in a version of reality that is not actually reality. And I think social media feeds that. I think social media also allows people to be less human. It lets people say things they wouldn't say to someone's face. You get keyboard warrior boldness, you can be very bold online in a way you wouldn’t be face to face,and that dehumanizes us," Diefenbeck said.
"Social media is designed to keep us engaged, above all else. They want to keep our attention so they can sell our eyeballs to advertisers."
Knowing that something is broken is one thing but figuring out how to fix it is another. With conflicts becoming more personal attacks on identity, when it leaks into personal lives, things become even more complicated.
In the survey of University of Delaware students, more than half of respondents indicated that they believed engaging in political discussions with those they disagreed with was important, however 60% said they at least somewhat agreed that engaging in these kinds of discussions made them upset.
When asked about how to resolve these issues, the experts offered several approaches. First, Diefenbeck advised recalibrating what you're trying to get out of the conversation.
"Identify what's the goal of the conversation you're going to have. Is the goal to be curious about another person's experience in the world and just like, see them as a more three-dimensional human? Or is the goal to convince somebody that they're wrong, is the goal to prove a point? You first need to understand what you're hoping to accomplish," she said, "And make sure the goal matches what you're trying to accomplish. If you're hoping for a more unified relationship, then you have to be thoughtful about that."
Jennifer Lambe echoed this point.
She said,"It's possible to have conversations that are respectful, where you disagree, but the goal is not to change somebody's mind. It's to understand where the other person is coming from and why they think what they think. And I think that's something that, we've lost that concept. It's like, no, I have to win this conversation. And that's not the goal."
The second tactic: lean into questions instead of counter arguments. Caplan, who researches interpersonal conflict, said this was one of the most underused tools in difficult conversations.
"You can't argue with somebody if you're asking them questions. So when dad says what he says, ask him a question about it, instead of countering it. In other words, talking to him, letting him tell you about his opinions doesn't require disagreement," he said, "Telling him he's wrong is never going to be a productive conversation, because he can't hear that. He's already shown you that. If I say 'you're wrong,' you shut down. So, what do you do instead? I try to understand you more. Ask you more about it. Asking questions always makes people less defensive. They get defensive because they don't feel heard, which is why they get more and more upset."
He even had a specific tactic to avoid igniting a fight.
"You can ask questions that point out contradictions, and that's really going to make someone pause. 'Dad, you said you wanted freedom, but you also want to take freedoms away from people, where's the line?' That kind of question requires an answer rather than a defense. Cognitive dissonance always makes people pause. It's one of the techniques of persuasion," Caplan explained.
The third approach was knowing when not to engage at all.
"One way to think about it is, what is it going to cost you? Instead of asking 'is it worth it to tell my brother what I really think,' ask what it will cost you," Caplan said, "Things are worth something because they are expensive. It might be worth it in the sense that you feel strongly. But will it cost you a relationship? So now, which is worth more to me, and in my opinion, having a brother is worth more to me than my political opinion."
Vice President of Student Wellbeing and Support at the University of Delaware, Adam Cantley, agreed.
Cantley said,"Sometimes part of a healthy conflict is a healthy boundary. Being really clear about the spaces you don't want to go in a conversation can be helpful. So everybody knows what they're getting into versus being surprised. If there's something you don't want to discuss, it's okay to outline that upfront."
Caplan said,"Not everything has to be talked about with family. You don't always tell your family about your social life. You can do the same with your political life."
Even armed with all of this knowledge, none of this can be easy, but Cantley offered a reframe about what we expect from relationships in the first place.
"Relationships exist on a continuum. There are people who are just casual acquaintances, and that's okay. And there are people who are your deepest connections as human beings, "he said, "Sometimes in these conversations, and these disagreements people assume you either have to be here or there. But relationships can land in the middle. And they can change, and that's okay as well. And I think people forget relationships happen on a continuum. They ebb and flow and it's okay and normal."
Personal experience showed Caplan an important reminder that even in the most heated argument, there was a way to take the temperature down.
He said,"I was having an argument with a friend and I was really upset. At one point they stopped talking, and I said 'are you there?' And the person said, 'yeah, I'm listening. You're upset, go ahead.' That took all the energy out of my anger."
Perhaps that was the most important advice of all, that when you took the time to listen and learn, it was no longer us versus them. You could reframe the problem, something Lambe teaches her students.
“Think about the issue that you're trying to talk about as a wicked problem, which is to say that the issue involves multiple competing values that we can agree are good things. But one is being emphasized by one group and one is emphasized by another," she said, "A wicked problem is one where there is no quick answer and no way to only focus on this value or thatvalue. It's really a tradeoff. If you view the problem that way instead of viewing the person as being wicked, then all of a sudden you can start to understand where the other person is coming from.”
Something as simple as stopping and listening to each other may show we are not as divided as we think.