New Study on Republican, Democrat Tolerance Goes Viral: Science Shows Liberals Aren’t So Open-Minded

While the Democrats may be known as the party of tolerance and diversity, one study indicated that the opposite may be the case.

In recent days, Temple University professor Jacob Shell posted a screenshot on X of an article headlined, “There is more diversity of thought on the political Right than on the political Left.”

The subtitle declared, “Although they pride themselves on open-mindedness, liberal thinking actually coalesces around a very narrow set of opinion, whereas the Right diverges widely.”

A visual that accompanied the article indeed showed a small, clustered set of blue dots to represent Democrats and their stances, while a much broader and more dispersed grouping of red dots represented Republicans.

“How did this happen?” Shell asked in the post, which had nearly 18 million views as of Friday morning.

How did this happen? pic.twitter.com/vSzXIix2Tb

— Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) June 11, 2025

Though the findings have gone viral in the past few days, they originate from a study published in the summer of 2023 called “Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modelling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts.”

The study noted that “the cluster reflecting the Democrat belief-system almost exclusively contained extreme attitudes as indicated by strong disagreement with each of the eight items,” including abortion, immigration, gun control, and gay marriage.

But at the same time “the cluster reflecting the Republican belief-system contained a wider range of attitude responses ranging from mild disagreement to maximum agreement.”

“Not only does the presented data suggest that Democrats embrace more extreme viewpoints on the selected issues compared with Republicans, but also that the Republican cluster includes some surprising issue positions that (under interval assumptions) might be assumed to fall into the Democrat cluster,” the study continued.

For better or for worse, the researchers found that “normatively acceptable viewpoints for Republicans on gay marriage, abortion rights, and environmental protection through business regulation range from mild agreement to extreme disagreement, hence, providing a potential space for political negotiation.”

But such diversity of views was much less prevalent among Democrats.

South Korean political commentator Kangmin Lee noted these realities in a series of posts about the study. The first of these posts has garnered an impressive 2.4 million views as of Friday morning.

Water is wet pic.twitter.com/OdmZXetPdk

— Kangmin Lee | 이강민 (@kangminjlee) June 12, 2025

“The Left: ‘Conform or die.’ The Right: ‘Let’s debate what is right and true,’” he wrote in a follow-up post.

“In other words, The Left: ‘Water is wet and if you disagree we hate you.’ The Right: ‘Is water wet or not? Let’s discuss.’”

Lee asserted that while the Republicans have the often positive tendency to “flesh out ideas,” such temperaments may leave vulnerabilities.

“Sometimes you don’t really need to have huge debates to know that killing babies and putting children on puberty blockers is wrong,” he observed.

“Anyone can try to use studies and evidence to justify moral insanity, so it’s ok and a societal good to just need to keep pushing with bold conviction to crush evil and promote the good,” Lee added.

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.