{"id":59989,"date":"2025-11-25T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/59989\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:44:08","slug":"unfriending-on-the-rise-but-voters-draw-the-line-at-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/59989\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfriending on the rise, but voters draw the line at violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

A third say they’ve cut off friends over politics, but nine in 10 say political violence is never justified.<\/p>\n

Floridians may be hanging lights and cueing up holiday playlists, but a new\u00a0Florida Chamber of Commerce<\/a>\u00a0poll says political divides have put plenty of group chats on the naughty list.<\/p>\n

Roughly a third of likely voters (34%) say they\u2019ve lost at least one friendship in the past couple of years purely over political disagreements. That strain is most intense among younger Floridians: 44% of the under-40 crowd report losing friends over politics, compared to just 24% of voters over 70.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s not full ideological segregation. Fewer than one in 10 voters say they have zero friends with different views, while nine out of 10 voters say their circles still include people they don\u2019t always agree with.<\/p>\n

The poll comes as Floridians head into another round of potentially spicy Thanksgiving tables, just months after the assassination of\u00a0Charlie Kirk\u00a0jolted the national conversation about political extremism.<\/p>\n

Asked whether violence is ever a justifiable means to achieve political goals, 9% of Florida voters said yes \u2014 a thankfully small but nevertheless significant bloc. A commanding 89% said it is never acceptable in American politics.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Younger voters again stood out: 17% \u2014 about one in six \u2014 of those under 40 said political violence can be justified, while support fell into the single digits for every age group 40 and older.<\/p>\n

Beyond percentages and margins of error, Florida Chamber President and CEO\u00a0Mark Wilson\u00a0said, \u201cAs we prepare for Thanksgiving and the holiday season, I remain incredibly thankful for everyone\u2019s freedom to advocate for whatever they choose, but when we disagree, we must do so civilly and never with violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Florida Chamber poll, conducted Oct. 16-25 by Cherry Communications, received responses from 608 likely voters across the Sunshine State. The sample comprises 209 Democrats, 268 Republicans, and 131 third- and no-party voters and has a +\/-4% margin of error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A third say they’ve cut off friends over politics, but nine in 10 say political violence is never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36434,28,3327,30,29,3329,36435],"class_list":["post-59989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-cherry-communications","tag-florida","tag-florida-chamber-of-commerce","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-mark-wilson","tag-political-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}