In 2017, Trump Is a Major Dating Deal Breaker. Golden Showers Are Not.
Data proves that singles care most about how their potential dates feel about the Donald
Daters today are more willing to compromise on golden showers than they are on Trump. Seriously.
Last week, we released a brand-new category of OkCupid’s iconic questions that cover the issues people care about right now: the immigration ban, climate change, Trump, golden showers, the list goes on. As it turns out, people care about these issues a lot. Over just 10 days, the 9 most engaging new questions garnered nearly 270,000 responses from OkCupid members in the US. And while the normal question on OkCupid is marked “important” by about half of those who answer, each of these new questions was tagged as especially important by at least three quarters of OkCupid members. Some of the answers were expected, but others were surprisingly counterintuitive; all helped us discover some interesting trends among singles in 2017.
Trump Is A Deal Breaker
Trump certainly gets people riled up, and daters’ views on him — positive or negative — are considered a major deal breaker for singles considering potential matches. 74% of OkCupid respondents answered “Hell no” to the question “Trump?” Only 4% responded “Hell yes.” The more demure responses of “yes” and “no” came in at 7% and 15% respectively. Granted, at OkCupid we’ve always known our members leaned progressive (a fact we’re quite proud of); still, the magnitude of the discrepancy was unexpected.
This isn’t just a liberal versus conservative thing, though; across party lines and genders, members agreed that Trump was the biggest deal breaker. “Trump?” had the highest percentage of men, women, liberals, and conservatives marking it as particularly important to them. Trump, we found, trumps all other deal breakers.
Hot-Button Issues Aren’t Just Left Versus Right
The data shows that many of these questions aren’t so obviously left versus right, either. Liberals and women were more likely to mark the new questions as important when compared to conservatives and men, respectively. This did not surprise us, considering many of the questions address hot-button topics for both groups. Nonetheless, when looking at the responses of all OkCupid members, all of the new questions were considered of higher importance to singles than traditional deal breakers, like smoking.
For example, 90% of all respondents answered “yes” to the question “Is climate change real?” 81% said that how a potential date answered this question was highly important. When broken down by political party, 69% of conservatives and 82% of liberals marked the climate change issue as important to them. This proves that, while climate change may be more of a hot button for liberals, conservatives still deem it important and relevant, particularly when it comes to dating.
The same can be said of daters’ views on “building a wall.” In response to the question “Do you believe we should ‘build a wall?’” 88% answered “100% no” and 82% marked the issue as important. Meanwhile, 71% of conservatives and 83% of liberals tagged it as important, making this issue one of the least polarizing between the two parties.
Russia and Golden Showers Are Now Part of Day-to-Day Dating
Once a conversation piece of any Cold War-era date, Russia has resurfaced as an important facet of dating culture. (You can thank Putin for that.) The question “Do you believe Russia hacked the election?” is the most polarizing of the new set; 45% of singles responded “There’s not enough evidence” while only 36% gave a resounding “yes.” 19% replied “No, it’s a conspiracy theory.” Although this question was not among the most highly rated on the importance scale, 78% of respondents marked it as important — that’s nearly 25% more than for the average question on OkCupid. Clearly, singles care about their potential date’s views on Russia. Whether these views are deal breakers or merely ice breakers depends on the person.
And now for the golden ticket, er, shower. Believe it or not, some things are more shocking than Putin — like golden showers, and singles’ thoughts on them. Perhaps Trump’s recent scandal made them mainstream (excuse the pun), but a somewhat surprising discovery was how down daters are with golden showers — or at least how open they are to discussing them. While Trump proved to be a major deal breaker, golden showers did not; nearly a quarter of respondents claimed a golden shower was either a turn-on, or they could be convinced to try one out. The central takeaway here? More singles say they are willing to get pissed on than support Trump.
Singles Today Care A Lot About Topical Issues
Remember, our data analyzed the results of nearly 270,000 answers — so we found a lot of statistics on dating in 2017. Here’s an analysis of the other topical issues singles consider deal breakers (or not) right now:
- 62% of respondents said they were concerned by Trump’s relationship with Putin. That’s compared to only 32% who replied they were concerned about how others perceive them, and only 4% who said they found their partner’s masturbation concerning.
- Only 3% of respondents claimed they do not believe climate change is real.
- 49% admitted that they were “scared shitless” after the election. 35% claimed they understood why people were, 13% said that people who were scared were “totally over exaggerating,” and 3% replied that those who were “don’t know what’s good for them.”
- 81% of respondents claimed to have voted in the last election.
- 83% replied that an immigration ban targeting Muslims would not make the country safer. 10% said it might, but shouldn’t be enforced. 7% said it would.
Data science by Nora Kuthe.
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