Political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits

The Politics of Mate Choice. John R. Alford et al. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 2, April 2011, Pp. 362–379, doi:10.1017/S0022381611000016

Abstract: Recent research has found a surprising degree of homogeneity in the personal political communication network of individuals  but  this  work  has  focused  largely  on  the  tendency  to  sort  into  likeminded  social,  workplace,  and residential political contexts. We extend this line of research into one of the most fundamental and consequential of political interactions—that between sexual mates. Using data on thousands of spouse pairs in the United States, we investigate  the  degree  of  concordance  among  mates  on  a  variety  of  traits.  Our  findings  show  that  physical and personality traits display only weakly positive and frequently insignificant correlations across spouses. Conversely, political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits. Further, it appears the political similarity of spouses derives in part from initial mate choice rather than persuasion and accommodation over the life of the relationship.