Are young women averse to conservative men?

Surveys of women find that they are averse to dating Republicans or conservatives. A sample of ~1000 young voters (18-34) found that 76% of the women said that they think being a “MAGA Republican” is a red flag; a separate sample found that 55% of young women would be less likely to date a Trump supporter, and 39% would be less likely to date a conservative.

So, many have proposed that right wing men are being left behind in the dating market in favor of the other men. Empirically, this does not appear to be the case. Surveys of incels find that they are about equally likely to be right and left wing and young, single men have historically more likely to claim to be liberal than conservative. I also tested for this effect in the GSS, and found that there was no significant difference in terms of likelihood of being single between liberal and conservative men.

p = .08, n = 1800, source = GSS

This discrepancy could be caused by several factors. The first is that women’s aversion to right wing men is only a stated preference that they are less likely to express in real world scenarios. It’s conceivable that this is the case — people may have a distorted view of what their political opponents are like in their heads, but are more likely to use social and behavioral cues when it comes to evaluating men in live social situations.

The other explanation is that right wingers may possess traits that make them more appealing romantic partners that compensate for their socially undesirable beliefs. This is certainly true to some extent. Republican men are more facially attractive than their Democratic counterparts (p < .001, source = WLS) and this applies to right vs left wing election candidates in Denmark as well. Right wingers also tend to be taller and are less likely to suffer from mental health issues.

While few have questioned that right wingers tend to be taller and more attractive, the association between political views and mental issues has been scrutinized much more due to the fact that liberals may operate in a culture where there are less social costs to being open about depression and anxiety and that there is no true association. I think this is unlikely, as behavioral genetics models find that the association between personality traits and political views is genetic in nature. If this is the case for personality, then it is also likely the case for mental health issues, though it would be nice to test this explicitly.

There is also the issue of self-selection; right wing men may be more interested in long term relationships than left wing men because of differences in values. Like with the revealed vs stated preferences case, it’s probably true to some extent, and there’s some indirect evidence that supports this model. In terms of big 5 personality traits, conservatives are more extraverted, emotionally stable, and conscientious than liberals, which are personality traits that predict the likelihood of getting into a relationship.

from here

from here