When 20-year-old Mia* met her long-distance boyfriend on an exchange trip to the US in 2022, initially their respective politics wasn’t a major factor in the relationship. Mia, a student from Norway, was aware that she and 21-year-old Scott*, an American student, had differing views from the outset — she describes herself as left-wing, and Scott, a Republican. While the pair would sometimes argue about politics, their differences never seriously threatened their relationship.
That was until a couple of weeks before this year’s US election, when Scott called Mia and told her he was going to vote for Trump. “I fell down to the floor in tears,” Mia tells me. “I couldn’t believe it. Obviously that’s something I would have blocked someone for if it was just a stranger on the internet.”
