A new poll from NBC News that looked at second-year college and university students is generating attention after revealing that “nearly half of college students wouldn’t room with someone who votes differently.” More specifically, the poll found that 54 percent of sophomores would “definitely” or “probably” be open to living with someone who supported the presidential candidate they opposed in 2020, but 46 percent said they would “probably not” or “definitely not.”

With so much partisan sorting and political ideology becoming central to understanding individual identity in recent years, the hesitancy to live and navigate dissimilarity is not particularly novel. There may just be real areas of deep disagreement that are hard to bridge, making it easier to live with someone more like-minded, and that is not unreasonable. What the survey found that has not made headlines and is both striking and disturbing was a strong partisan divide when it came to being open to engaging with differences—a keystone of civil society and a healthy democracy.

Specifically, the NBC poll found that Democratic sophomores were significantly more opposed to rooming with someone who voted differently in 2020 than Republicans and Independents. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of Democrats reported that they would “probably not” or “definitely not” room with such a person while just over a quarter of Republican (28 percent) and a third (32 percent) of Independent students felt the same way.

Far too often, the headlines are missing the fact that so much closed-mindedness and balkanization in terms of openness toward engaging with political difference is far more pronounced on the left. And this is a phenomenon that I have observed as a professor who has taught college and university students for almost two decades now. Despite preaching ideas about inclusion, diversity, acceptance, and love, students on the left appear to be repeatedly closed-minded and intolerant of those who see the world differently; one is welcome if they fit within a narrow band of ideas and identities and everyone else is an oppressor of some sort.

The data is unambiguously clear here in terms of left-of-center student intolerance: In 2021, Axios found that young leftists, particularly females, were far more narrow minded than conservatives with just 5 percent of Republican college students saying that they would not befriend someone from the opposite party compared to almost 4 in 10 (37 percent) Democrats. The data also demonstrated that 30 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans would not work for someone who voted differently from them, while 71 percent of Democrats but only 31 percent of Republicans would not date someone with opposing views.

Turning to the nation at large, the numbers from the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey reveal similar levels of liberal bias toward those they disagree with. The survey found that despite our polarized politics, only 15 percent of Americans report ending relationships over political disagreements; the overwhelming majority—84 percent—have not walked away and figured out how to work with others with whom they may disagree. A further breakdown of the responses, however, uncovers some troubling findings. While 10 percent of conservatives say they have lost a friend over politics, 28 percent of liberals say the same. For extreme conservative identifiers, 22 percent say they have canceled a friendship, a handful of points higher than the national average. In contrast, a whopping 45 percent of extreme liberal identifiers have ended a friendship over politics—twice the figure of their conservative counterparts. Time and time again, the data tell the same story: Liberal college and university students, along with those who are left of center in the population at large, are far more closed minded and open to canceling others than their moderate and conservative counterparts. This should not be ignored.

The headlines, which often suggest that Americans are moderate and showcase studies that only report facts and findings in the aggregate, are doing the nation a disservice. It is true that most Americans are reasonable. Thus, it becomes even more important to highlight the fact that data regularly shows that liberals in America tend to be far more open to cancel culture and ending relationships than most Americans. These liberal impulses are not only hypocritical given the language of love and tolerance liberals preach, but it is also counterproductive. The NBC poll lede was misleading; while the majority of liberal sophomores are opposed to becoming roommates with political adversaries, only minorities of conservatives and independents feel the same way. Collegiate life should be uncomfortable: Students need to learn how to work through a world full of diversity of thought and ideas. Collegiate life, and our civic vitality, is threatened when people cannot find shared humanity and recognize that politics is about tradeoffs and hearing the other side.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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