Forty-five percent of Americans have gotten into a fight over the election with a friend, a family member or a co-worker this year, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds ― up from just over a third in May.
Thirty-eight percent of Americans have argued with a friend, 30 percent with a family member, and 16 percent with a co-worker. Ten percent have managed to get into arguments with all three groups.
A significant portion of the public says they have no idea what those on the other side are thinking. Thirty-nine percent of Americans, including 70 percent of Democrats, can’t understand why anyone would vote for Donald Trump. Forty-two percent, including 77 percent of Republicans, don’t get why anyone would support Hillary Clinton.
But there’s an even bigger disconnect ― many people don’t have a close relationship with anyone whose views are different from their own. Just 28 percent of Americans have both at least one family member or close friend who supports Clinton and at least one who supports Trump. Half of Republicans say that no relative or close friend of theirs supports Clinton, while 55 percent of Democrats say no one in their circle is backing Trump.
People with friends and family in both political camps are, perhaps unsurprisingly, more likely to report that they’ve gotten into arguments this year. Nearly three-quarters say they’ve had at least one fight over the election. But they’re also more likely to have some understanding for those with opposing views.
While the sample sizes in each case are small, Republicans who know at least one Clinton supporter are 19 points likelier than those who don’t to say they understand where her base is coming from. Democrats with friends or family members supporting Trump are 21 points likelier than other Democrats to say they get why people are backing him.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 1 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls.You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.