Leftists are determined to date each other - and not settle for liberals: ‘Politics are the new religion'

The Guardian

7 days ago

Zohran Mamdani gave Hinge an unofficial boost last month when the New York mayoral candidate revealed that he met his wife, Rama Duwaji, through swiping. 'There is still hope on those dating apps,' he said on the Bulwark podcast a week before his stunning victory in the Democratic primary. The tidbit spread over social media, cementing the 33-year-old democratic socialist's status as a millennial everyman. A subsequent Cosmopolitan headline read: 'Zohran Mamdani could make history (as the first NYC mayor to meet his wife on Hinge).'
Representatives for Hinge would not comment, but plenty of eligible New Yorkers did, claiming they would redownload the app due to Mamdani's success, in spite of their dating fatigue. 'Now I'm clocking in like it's a full-time job,' one user posted on TikTok. 'If he can find love on that app maybe I can,' another wrote in a caption.
However, they could run into an ideological hurdle while filling out their profiles. Alongside answering basic questions – 'Do you smoke, drink or do drugs? Where did you go to college?' – Hinge ask singles to choose their political affiliation: liberal, conservative, moderate, not political, or the mysterious 'other'.
Some people to the left say the label 'liberal' does not encapsulate their socialist views. They associate it with establishment figures such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – or Mamdani's rival, former governor Andrew Cuomo. Many liberals deem proposals by Hinge's golden boy (freezing rent, taxing the super-rich, making buses free) too radical. A socialist might want to distance themselves from such center-leaning liberalism and instead embrace the 'hot commie summer' that hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb warned his fellow billionaires of.
'There's a real appetite to date leftists now,' said Abby Beauregard, fundraising chair for Democratic Socialists of America's New York chapter. She said that Mamdani's victory reinvigorated the dating scene in in the city, 'but it's really hard to find explicitly leftist dating spaces. Most dating apps have a liberal option, but no leftist option, and it's not a turn-on to see 'other', because that could mean anything.' (For instance, far-right or communist.)
So lefty singles are finding more explicit ways to signal their politics to like-minded love matches, on Hinge and beyond.
Some have turned their dating profiles into mini-manifestos, writing out their entire belief system as answers to the apps' prompts. It's common to see watermelon emojis as euphemisms for solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some users will warn that they'll swipe left on Terfs (the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminists), cops or Donald Trump supporters.
'It's important for me to see those signifiers,' said Caroline, a 38-year-old florist who lives in Queens. (She and other sources are going by their first name for privacy reasons.) 'There's a nice feeling on the apps right now with people being proud to be communists or leftists, and they're saying that.'
But she's wary of anyone who comes off as too lefty. 'That seems kind of tryhard,' she said. 'It can read as too performative, that you're fishing for alt-girls or you're a centrist who just wants someone freaky from Bushwick.'
Tinder, OK Cupid and the kink-friendly app Feeld allow users to write their own bios, unlike Hinge, and they can choose within those bios whether they reveal their political affiliations. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Tinder also launched profile 'stickers' so users could signal the issues they felt strongly about, such as 'voting for reproductive rights'.
For her part, Caroline, who uses Feeld, wrote in her profile that she's 'far left' and 'COVID-cautious'. That feels like enough for her. 'Saying 'I love vaccines!', 'free Palestine!' or 'fuck Trump!' would be trite. It's all implied.'
Dennis Mulvena describes himself as 'very left-leaning'. He used to keep his affiliations private on Hinge because he believed there was room for nuance in discussing politics, but recently listed himself as liberal.
'With the return of Trump in the last two years, it's important to have that out there,' said Mulvena, 30, who works in customer service for a car manufacturer. 'Admittedly gay people who live in Brooklyn tend to lean left, but I have had the experience of going on a date with someone who then revealed he was part of his college's Young Republicans club.' That was the last time he assumed that everyone he matched with would share the same views as him.
According to an NBC News poll from April, the partisan gap between gen Z women, who are more likely to say they are Democrat, and gen Z men, who have shifted right, is the widest of all generations. And, increasingly, a person's politics have an impact on their perceived desirability. While past generations may have thought nothing about a conservative and liberal romantic pairing ('don't talk about politics or religion at the dinner table'), 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds think it's important to date or marry someone who shares their political beliefs.
'Politics is the new religion,' said Dr Jess Carbino, a former sociologist for Bumble and Tinder who studies dating apps. 'It's become the way that people choose to frame how they look at the world and their values.'
Lily, a 23 year-old socialist who was recently laid off, is wary of seeing someone identify as 'not political' on Hinge. 'I'm immediately scared of what that means,' they said. 'As a queer person living through everything that's happening in this country, I need to know someone has a baseline care for people and their community.'
In New York, more voters between the ages of 25 and 34 – a mix of gen Z and younger millennials – turned out to vote in the Democratic primary than any other age cohort, indicating a vigor for leftist politics. Recently, Lily has seen young people write on Hinge that they'd only go out with someone who voted for Mamdani or that they'd never go out with a Cuomo supporter. They have seen multiple people answer the Hinge prompt 'when was the last time you cried?' with: 'when Zohran won'. (They presume these were happy tears.)
This is not to say New York is a young Bolshevik paradise: conservatives in the city are also trying to find each other. Some have gone into voluntary exile from mainstream dating apps, creating their own options. 'Our dating apps have gone woke,' reads the description for Date Right Stuff, one such app backed by Peter Thiel. 'Connect with people who aren't offended by everything.'
In March, Date Right Stuff hosted a singles event at New York's Trump Tower called 'make America hot again'. It was a coming-out night for what the app's former chief marketing officer Raquel Debono called 'city conservatives', or Republicans who prefer urban life to small towns and tradwifedom.
They are not the only ones going off-app: the Mamdani effect on New York's lefties could not be contained to Hinge.
In early July, young people gathered inside a cocktail bar on the Lower East Side for a 'sexy socialist singles' event hosted by New York's DSA. Those looking for something casual – or, as the host put it, 'if you just want fast and free, like Zohran's buses' – were sent to one part of the bar, while those who wanted 'a slow burn, like taxing the fucking rich' went to another. At one point, organizers directed polyamorous attendees to a room upstairs, where they could mingle with other non-monogamous individuals.
Upstairs, Sven, 25, an economics master's student who lives in Bushwick, said that young people view the DSA as a social club just as much as a platform for socialist candidates. 'I saw a post on Reddit talking about how all Zohran's canvassers are hot, and we have soccer leagues and book clubs,' they said. 'It's a great way to make friends.'
Downstairs, back in monogamyville, Lauren, a video editor who lives in Astoria (the Queens neighborhood Mamdani represents as a New York assemblymember), waited for a friend who was off flirting. 'There's definitely an energy when I wear my Zohran T-shirt out,' she said. 'People are revved up. They'll call you from across the street saying, 'What's up?' or 'I love that guy.' It's a real conversation starter.'
New York's DSA will continue its sexy socialist mixers in youth hubs Bushwick and Williamsburg, and in the Upper West Side for those over 30. In the meantime, singles will have to keep parsing political signifiers on dating apps.