Two become one? spouses and agreement in political opinions

Abstract

Spouses who talk about politics with each other have long been considered aberrant cases of political discussion because of the frequency of their interaction and the high levels of agreement between them. Using the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Election Study, we challenge these assumptions. We find that compared with other types of discussion dyads, married dyads are no more likely to agree about a host of policy issues, even though they do talk about them more frequently. In addition, we find even when spouses do agree about their presidential vote choice more often, they do not perceive this agreement to exist. These findings indicate that within the microfoundations of married political behavior, spouses may experience less political variety because of the frequency of their interaction, but this does not necessarily mean they experience lower levels of disagreement. © The Author(s) 2011.