Conservative outrage over the presence of a female pop star at professional football games is a sign of how many parts of American life and culture have taken on a partisan political flavor.
Partisanship doesn’t just apply to opinions about the dating lives of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Food, too, is another aspect of the latest set of not-quite-political conflicts – including beverage brands and main courses. What you serve at your Super Bowl party, or what the host serves at the event you attend, can now be interpreted, or twisted, through a partisan lens.
Our public-opinion research shows that almost nothing today is free of partisanship – whether the item in question has anything to do with government action, political ideology or public policy, or not. At times, the issues that erupt into political skirmishes are the result of fanciful conspiratorial thinking, blatant misinformation or just the personal preferences of political leaders.
We have found that these developments, in which polarization invades parts of Americans’ lives that really aren’t political, deepen existing divides in society. These conflicts also make it harder to have fun in mixed political company, and harder to steer clear of accidentally offending someone at your Super Bowl party.