Recently, a friend on Facebook posted an interesting request: “Go to Donald Trump's, Hillary Clinton's, Bernie Sanders’, Gary Johnson’s, and Jill Stein’s pages and see how many friends like them” I have 3.096 friends on Facebook. 125 like Trump, 425 like Clinton, 446 like Sanders, 64 like Johnson, and 99 like Stein.

Another friend posted about a poll he had heard about concerning unfriending on Facebook. I suspect that the poll he is referring to is Political Polarization & Media Habits. It is from two years ago, probably still relevant, but I’d love to hear updates on it.

I shared a few thoughts on his post about this:

I suspect that the article you may be referring to is based on research done back in 2014 by the Pew Research Center on Journalism and Media. They found that 26%of those surveyed blocked people because of politics. 69% of liberals did and 55% of conservatives did.

It may be tempting to think that this suggests conservatives are more open minded or tolerant than liberals, but the poll suggests that other reasons may make more sense.

The poll finds consistent conservatives "Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics", "are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views" and "are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics."

From this it would seem a reasonable contributing factor to why conservatives are less likely to block someone because of politics is that they are less likely to have people to block in the first place.

An additional contributing factor that does not seem to be included in this research is the style of political rhetoric. I have unfriended people on Facebook over politics, but it is not the political view that has led me to unfriend them, it is their tendency to insult people and be verbally abusive that has caused me to unfriend people in politics, no matter what their political ideology. In my personal experience, and I don't have independent data to back this up, I have found conservatives, especially those who get their news primarily from Fox, to be more verbally abusive.

Since then, I’ve asked friends to share how many of their friends like different candidates. I hope that this will get people to think a little more about the political discourses they are part of.