Young women are requesting no MAGA matches, says April Davis, the matchmaker and founder of Luma Luxury Matchmaking.
“Since (President Donald Trump) first came into office, politics has become a major issue when it comes to finding a match,” she said.
Most of her clients used to be moderates or independents and many still are.
But more people are now willing to lay out their political preferences up front, whether it’s avoiding a liberal or a Trump voter.
She also gets requests from some people seeking a partner who is not vaccinated, another issue embroiled in politics increasingly since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Things are so much different compared to a decade and a half ago when Davis started her business.
People were cautious with dating apps and were more likely to see them as taboo. That was before Tinder launched its prototype app called MatchBox in 2012 and changed the course of modern dating.
Real-life conversations led to connections. People “were more open and curious,” said April, “whereas now they’ve got a filter.”
The professional matchmaker revealed her husband isn’t what she thought she was looking for on paper, and even though they shared similar values, their genuine connection played a big role in bringing them together.
But “It’s hard to get people to think beyond (their criteria) these days,” Davis said.
“That’s why you have fewer people in relationships than ever before because they’re dating for a dismissal,” she explained.
Politics is a big reason people decide a dating partner isn’t suitable, complicating the world of dating — especialy as men and women drift apart from each other ideologically.
A Substack analysis written by Ryan Burge, a writer and professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests young men born in the 2000s are becoming more conservative on certain issues compared to previous generations, while Gen Z women are described as “easily the most socially progressive segment of the American population.”
A similar, though less pronounced, gender gap exists among millennials, too.
Members of both the Gen Z and millennial generations are marrying later than previous generations, pushing this milestone until their late 20s or early 30s and putting school and careers first.
These generations also attribute greater value to politics than other generations.
Politics is deeply personal for young people
Dawn Moore, the clinic director at the Center for Individual, Couple and Family Counseling, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has four kids between the ages of 18 and 23.
“I’m Gen X, my older brothers are what you call boomers. When I was a child, I remember my dad picking up the newspaper, which came to the porch every morning, and reflecting on the news for 45 minutes with a cup of coffee, then putting it down and that was that,” she said.
But these days, people’s engagement with politics is “much more emotional. It’s about attributing political beliefs to personhood,” especially among younger people, the clinical director said.
Ahead of her conversation with the Deseret News, she asked her eldest son, currently a 23-year-old senior at college in North Dakota, for his perspective on the role politics plays in the modern world of dating and marriage.
“‘Politics seems to dictate everything,’” she read his message over the phone. “‘You can’t buy a coffee if you don’t like the place’s views. We’ve reached a state of political turmoil where I won’t even try to become friends with someone if they outwardly talk about liberal views. It almost becomes a deal-breaker. This makes me sad,’” Moore read out loud.
She added that her son is “conservative” and is set to get married in May.
Where Gen Z leans on political beliefs to not only decide who to be friends with but also who to date or marry, “I didn’t have that experience,” Moore said.
As a Gen X, she recalled politics being less than 10% of what she and her husband talked about during their courting period.
Gen Z and millennials who don’t read the newspaper or watch cable news still “talk about it on the daily,” she added. They get “inundated” with information, whether it’s foreign wars or the economic downturn on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
Bye ‘girlboss,’ hello ‘trad wife’
Young people are also in search of stability now more than ever because of economic pressures, a stiff housing market, political division and violence, and stress from an era marked by the pandemic.
Her daughter, 20, a student at Colorado State University, more on the liberal side, opened up to Moore about rejecting the idea of marrying before the age of 25.
She’s more interested in finishing college and getting her finances in order before making a serious commitment, Moore said.
The trend to get married later and later was big among millennials, who “really waited a long time under the guise of going to college, buying a home, becoming financially stable.”
“Gen Z is definitely seeing that and asking what the better path is,” she added. Her younger daughters say they long for a “fulfilled life.” They want the best of both worlds — a sense of purpose and to raise children.
Matchmaker Davis hears that in her line of work all the time, even from those women who consider themselves feminists.
“They still want a man to be a man in the relationship,” Davis said. “That means making more money and picking up the check. But they also want him to be a lot more liberal in his other values.”
She points to the “trad wife” phenomenon. More and more young women are rejecting the “girlboss” revolution millennials led during the years of the Obama administration.
Instead of the hustle culture, they are opting into another trend: the “trad wife,” short for traditional wife, a woman who aspires to live by what she sees as traditional gender roles in marriage.
“It’s not so much that women are looking to be subservient to their husbands,” said Davis. “It’s more about wanting to raise their children.”
“They want to homeschool and make healthy food for their kids. But they’re not necessarily just looking to give up their independence.”
Davis adds that “women are making more money now than ever,” which can present itself as another challenge for younger men.
Davis’ matchmaking company works with high-level executives and she’s noticed that women start to lean Republican more when they begin making around half a million dollars a year.
But younger women are also defying the assumption that high income and conservative values go hand in hand, showcasing the depth of the ideological differences between the two sexes.