UK Study finds Reform voters more datable than Tories

But left-wing voters had a better chance of getting a match overall

University of Southampton

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Reform voters enjoy more success on dating apps than Conservative voters, according to new research from the University of Southampton and Harvard University.

The study, published in the Journal of Politics found that even left-wing voters are more likely to swipe right (‘like’) on a Reform voter’s profile than a Conservative voter.

Dating preferences were heavily split along the left-right divide, with left-wing voters more likely to reject someone on the right than vice-versa.

Researchers say increasing polarisation is driving centre-right voters into the arms of potential romantic partners to their political right, and away from those on the centre-left.

 “Voters from the two main parties are very unlikely to want to date someone from the other party,” says Dr Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte, lead author of the study from the University of Southampton. “Conservative voters were much happier to match with a Reform UK voter than someone who voted Labour.

“This isn’t about falling in love with the radical right. It’s about Conservative voters being more comfortable dating someone they disagree with on some things than dating someone from the opposite ideological camp altogether. That’s a striking illustration of just how polarized our societies have become.”

Overall, Labour, Green, and Lib Dem voters had a better chance of getting a match than Reform and Conversative voters, likely due to the fact people who use dating apps tend to be younger and therefore more socially liberal.

With radical right parties enjoying success in the polls, researchers wanted to see if voting for Reform UK or Vox in Spain carried any social stigma that might put off other dating app users.

To find out, 2,000 18- to 40-year-olds (who make up 85 percent of Tinder users) in Britain and Spain were asked to swipe left (reject) or right (like) on more than 20,000 different fictitious dating profiles using an online app.

The profiles were AI-generated variations of attractive men and women’s faces. Their bios contained information including their occupation, hobbies, interests, and schooling, and some included an indication of who they voted for.

Dr Alberto López Ortega, a co-author on the paper from Harvard University, says: “While Reform voters had a below average favourably on dating apps, they are four points more likely to enjoy success on the dating market than Conservative supporters.

“This suggests that dating a Reform UK voter is not ‘beyond the pale’ and support for the radical right has become more normalised. That said, we found expressing support for either party is likely to be a ‘red flag’ for more left-wing dating app users.”

In Spain, Vox supporting profiles had less chance of being matched than other parties, but those on the right were 47 per cent more likely to ‘like’ them than those on the left.

Researchers say tolerance of radical right parties means centre right parties may be more likely to engage with them, as there seems to be little risk of alienating their own voters in doing so.

“When there’s no social stigma for supporting the radical right, the electoral cost of cooperation collapses,” said Dr Turnbull-Dugarte. “This helps explain why mainstream parties like the Conservatives (and even more recently Labour) have increasingly adopted copy-cat positions on immigration, or why the idea of a Tory-Reform pact no longer feels far-fetched.

“If voters don’t punish the association — and might even prefer it — then the political incentive to hold the line against radical right positions simply disappears.”

The paper Far Right Normalization & Centrifugal Affect. Evidence from the Dating Market is published in the Journal of Politics and is available online.

Ends

Contact

Steve Williams, Media Manager, University of Southampton, press@soton.ac.uk or 023 8059 3212.

Notes for editors

1. The paper Far Right Normalization & Centrifugal Affect. Evidence from the Dating Market is published in the Journal of Politics. An advanced copy is available upon request.
2. For Interviews with Dr Stuart Dr Turnbull-Dugarte please contact Steve Williams, Media Manager, University of Southampton press@soton.ac.uk or 023 8059 3212.
3. Images available here: https://safesend.soton.ac.uk/pickup?claimID=onyERkzeiuiCAQnA&claimPasscode=MnTQQ8gwfRsCaCPw

Additional information

The University of Southampton drives original thinking, turns knowledge into action and impact, and creates solutions to the world’s challenges. We are among the top 100 institutions globally (QS World University Rankings 2025). Our academics are leaders in their fields, forging links with high-profile international businesses and organisations, and inspiring a 22,000-strong community of exceptional students, from over 135 countries worldwide. Through our high-quality education, the University helps students on a journey of discovery to realise their potential and join our global network of over 200,000 alumni. www.southampton.ac.uk

www.southampton.ac.uk/news/contact-press-team.page

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Dating success rates by partisanship 

Conservative voters had the lowest chance of getting a match online, below Reform UK. Labour voters had the best chance, with similar success rates amongst the Greens and Lib Dems. Credit University of Southampton.

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University of Southampton

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Journal

The Journal of Politics

DOI

10.1086/736698 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Far Right Normalization & Centrifugal Affect. Evidence from the Dating Market

Article Publication Date

16-May-2025

 

Most people trust climate scientists less than other scientists – but not everywhere

Striking differences in trust in climate scientists across countries and ideologies may offer clues for getting people to support global warming action

University of New South Wales

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Dr Omid Ghasemi is a researcher with the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response, Sydney.

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Climate scientists are overall less trusted than other types of scientists, according to a new study led by the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response (ICRR).

Dr Omid Ghasemi and colleagues compared responses from a survey of nearly 70,000 people across 68 countries on the trustworthiness of climate scientists with a broad range of other ideological and demographic factors. 

“We don’t exist in a vacuum, and this research allows a new lens to view different factors that may influence how people view climate scientists – and the forces undermining public confidence in their work,” Dr Ghasemi says.

The results, rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all), to 5 (very strongly), revealed an overall average trust rating of 3.5 for climate scientists worldwide compared to 3.62 for scientists in general. 

However, six countries, and China in particular, bucked the trend entirely, indicating significantly higher trust in climate scientists.

Political polarisation putting ice caps at risk 

The research showed people with right-leaning political views tended to trust climate scientists less overall, including in the US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and much of Europe. 

“It’s arguably not a surprise that you see significant increases in the trust gap between climate scientists and other scientists in these countries,” Dr Ghasemi says.  

“They have had decades of coordinated efforts by conservative political actors and fossil fuel interests to politicise climate science and undermine its credibility.” 

Interesting too, says Dr Ghasemi, are those countries which showed the opposite relationship, or no significant association between ideology and trust in climate scientists. 

“In some Eastern European, Southeast Asian, and African countries, right-leaning individuals tended to trust scientists and climate scientists more,” Dr Ghasemi says.  

“This might suggest that political leadership attitudes, rather than peoples’ political views, better explain these differences in trust.”

Demographic differences behind doubts 

The survey data, collected as part of the collaborative Trust in Science and Science-Related Populism (TISP) project, covered a total 111 variables. 

Dr Ghasemi’s analysis of the data collected reveals some non-political factors may also be linked to higher trust in climate scientists, such as living in cities, having stronger religious beliefs, valuing science or the scientific method, or being a younger rather than older adult. 

Meanwhile, people who support social hierarchies and those who believe common sense is better than scientific expertise are less likely to trust climate scientists.

An embeddable map is available. Click here.

An embeddable map is available. Click here.

Credit

Omid Ghasemi

Journal

Environmental Research

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists: a 68 country study

Article Publication Date

19-May-2025

COI Statement

NA.

 

First-of-its-kind global study shows grasslands can withstand climate extremes with a boost of nutrients

Faced with drought, fertilizer helps grasslands grow strong

\Binghamton University

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Cedar Creek Long Term Ecological Research Site was one of 26 sites studied as part of a global study examining the effect of drought and nutrient addition on grasslands.

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Fertilizer might be stronger than we thought. A new international study featuring faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York found that fertilizer can help plants survive short-term periods of extreme drought, findings which could have implications for agriculture and food systems in a world facing climate stressors.

“Resources such as nutrients and water have been fundamentally altered by humans on a global scale, and this can disrupt how plants grow,” said Amber Churchill, an assistant professor of ecosystem science at Binghamton University and co-author on the study. “Extreme changes in these resources are therefore predicted to have an even larger potential impact, with implications for a range of economic sectors. This is especially true for global grasslands, where resource availability for water and nutrients directly supports livestock and pastoralism on all inhabited continents.”

To address this issue, the researchers assessed how grasslands respond to extreme drought and increased nutrient availability through field experiments at 26 sites across 9 countries.

“It took what are often very site-specific methodologies, where we're interested in the impacts of nutrients or the impacts of drought and water availability, and it scaled a single site experiment up to something at a much larger spatial scale,” said Churchill. “The ability to test both variation in nutrients, as well as this global change driver of impacts of drought in combination at such a huge spatial extent – that's the really novel aspect of this experiment.”

The researchers added nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium – essential nutrients that all plants need – as well as a one-time addition of a series of micronutrients. They found that while drought alone reduced plant growth by 19%, adding fertilizer increased plant growth by 24%. Importantly, the combination of the two resulted in no net change in growth, largely driven by grasses that were able to take advantage of the added nutrients even under drought. 

“The really big takeaway is that adding nutrients can offset the impact of drought, and this is really true in areas that are already pretty dry,” said Churchill.

Churchill worked at two of the 26 sites. At the Yarramundi site at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment of Western Sydney University, she managed data, recording the number of plants present in the area. At the Cedar Creek Long Term Ecological Research Site in Minnesota, she was in charge of cleaning all data and organizing it to be shared with the network of researchers. 

“In terms of drought, we get less growth; we add fertilizer, we get more growth. As you're seeing some of those idiosyncrasies, the sort of follow-up lines are where it gets a little bit more interesting,” said Churchill. “Traditionally, we might hypothesize that if plants are already limited by water at, say, an arid site, plants may not be able to respond to adding nitrogen. But we actually found the opposite of that, where plants are able to better respond to the nitrogen addition under these more arid conditions. And so that's a really sort of a striking difference than what we might have expected.”

Churchill will be creating similar treatments at Binghamton University as part of the Pasture and Lawn Enhanced Diversity Global-change Experiment (PLEDGE), at Nuthatch Hollow, a 75-acre, “open-air lab” at Binghamton University.

While adding fertilizer might temporarily offset the effects of drought, said Churchill, it’s not a feasible long-term solution.

“In a forage production system where you need to offset the effects of drought, adding fertilizer will remove that effective drought,” she said. “That's a great benefit, but that costs a lot of money. So there's a tradeoff there. It can be a tool used, but it's not going to be the long-term solution.”

Churchill said that in terms of management, the number of plant species growing might be a more important factor in surviving drought.

“We have a prediction that as you have more species, one of those species is more likely to withstand the drought, so you'll get at least some biomass, even if each species doesn’t make it. And so the idea is you'll have more stable biomass over the long term if you have more species present. That's something we can't test with this data set, because we're only looking at one year. But longer-term data sets can look at that sort of a question.”

The paper, “Aridity modulates grassland biomass responses to combined drought and nutrient addition,” will be published May 19 in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

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Journal

Nature Ecology & Evolution

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Aridity modulates grassland biomass responses to combined drought and nutrient addition

Article Publication Date

19-May-2025

 

Public support for rule enforcement to stop the decline of democracy in EU countries

What if democratic principles are undermined such that the basis for a community of states like the EU is eroded?

University of Konstanz

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Freedom of the press and the independence of the courts are under fire: The fact that basic democratic principles are being systematically eroded by right-wing populist parties is clearly visible in EU countries like Hungary and Poland. The "democratic backsliding" of individual member states, as the erosion of democratic systems is called, poses a problem for the European Union (EU), which sees itself as a community of democratic states. How should the EU respond? What reaction do the region's citizens expect of the EU? Political scientists from the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" at the University of Konstanz have just published a study on this topic in the Journal of European Public Policy.

The rules of democracy must be upheld
EU citizens are very concerned about democratic backsliding in EU member states. This is a result of surveys conducted by Sharon Baute, Max Heermann (first author) and Dirk Leuffen in Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden. A large majority of EU citizens would like the EU take measures to protect democracy. Political scientist Max Heermann emphasizes: "Our data clearly show that most EU citizens would like member states to be sanctioned if they leave the canon of democratic and constitutional rule of law." According to Heermann, people do not support these policies out of malice towards such countries, but because they "recognize that the community of states can only work if all of the countries follow the rules that they agreed to when joining the EU." The high level of support for such sanctions should encourage the EU to actually enact and enforce them effectively.

Sanctions in groups and in inter-country relationships
In their study, the researchers draw on findings from the field of behavioural economics – that groups respond to norm violations with strong sanctioning behaviour. For Dirk Leuffen, Vice Rector for Research and Academic Staff Development at the University of Konstanz and co-author of the study, this is a good example of how findings from one discipline can inspire work in other areas: "Without the knowledge provided by literature from the field of behavioural economics, we definitely would have asked different questions and constructed our study very differently. It is exciting to see that the results of lab research in behavioural economics can be applied to inter-country relationships in the EU."

Sharon Baute, a junior professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, highlights the political implications: "Our study demonstrates that EU citizens show less solidarity for member states that violate shared basic rules. This means that countries that break these rules are harming themselves over the long term."

Link to the publication

 

Key facts:

• Original publication: Heermann, Max, Baute, Sharon & Leuffen, Dirk (2025), Democratic Backsliding and Support for Public Good Provision in the European Union, Journal of European Public Policy: https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973.
• Key result: A large majority of EU citizens would like the EU take measures to protect democracy.
• Authors of the study: Political scientist Max Heermann (first author), who was recently hired by ETH Zurich, had been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz beforehand. Sharon Baute, junior professor of comparative social policy, and Dirk Leuffen, professor of political science with a focus on international politics, both work at the University of Konstanz and in the university's Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality".
• The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the context of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.
• The Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" at the University of Konstanz investigates the political causes and consequences of inequality from an interdisciplinary perspective. The research is dedicated to some of the most pressing issues of our time: access to and distribution of (economic) resources, the global rise of populists, climate change and unfairly distributed educational opportunities.

 

Note to editors:
You can download photos here:

1) Max Heermann: LINK
Caption: Political scientist Max Heermann (first author), who was recently hired by ETH Zurich, had been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz beforehand.
Copyright: University of Konstanz, Ines Janas

2) Sharon Baute: LINK
Caption: Sharon Baute is a junior professor of comparative social policy at the University of Konstanz. She is a Principal Investigator in the university's Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality".
Copyright: University of Konstanz, Ines Janas

3) Porträtfoto von Dirk Leuffen: LINK
Bildunterschrift: Dirk Leuffen is a professor of political science with a focus on international politics at the University of Konstanz. He is a Principal Investigator in the university's Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality".
Copyright: University of Konstanz, Ines Janas

 

 

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Journal

Journal of European Public Policy

DOI

10.1080/13501763.2025.2503973 

 

Whisker whisperers

Research reveals how mouse whiskers can “hear” the world

Weizmann Institute of Science

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Nestled in dark burrows, with a limited sense of vision, mice brush their whiskers against their environment to navigate and to detect objects around them. This behavior, termed whisking, has been extensively studied in the past few decades and has traditionally been viewed as purely an act of touch. Now Weizmann Institute of Science researchers present an entirely new, multisensory view of this process. These resounding findings, published recently in Current Biology, reveal that whisking generates subtle sounds that are encoded in the auditory cortex of mice, enhancing their perception of their surroundings.

“Whiskers are so delicate that no one had thought of checking whether they produce sounds that mice are able to hear,” says team leader Prof. Ilan Lampl of Weizmann’s Brain Sciences Department.

The study offers a unique glimpse into the complexity of natural perception, which commonly involves input from multiple senses, in this case touch and hearing. In fact humans too combine these two types of cues more often than one might think. Imagine, for example, your fingers delving into a crowded bag to search for a candy bar and the sudden, welcome rustle of the wrapper.

"Whiskers are so delicate that no one had thought of checking whether they produce sounds that mice are able to hear"

In the new study, Lampl’s team – led by Dr. Ben Efron, then a PhD student, who worked with Drs. Athanasios Ntelezos and Yonatan Katz – started out by recording the sounds made by whiskers probing different surfaces, including dried Bougainvillea leaves and aluminum foil. The researchers used sensitive microphones that can record ultrasonic frequencies, which are beyond the upper limit of the audible range for humans. They placed the microphones some 2 centimeters from the source of the sound, about the same distance as from the mouse’s ear to its whiskers.

Next, the scientists made entirely different recordings: They measured neural activity in the auditory cortex of mice that were brushing their whiskers against different objects. The recordings showed that the auditory networks of the mice responded to the whisker-generated sounds, no matter how subtle. When the researchers interrupted the pathways that convey the sensation of touch from the whiskers to the brain, the auditory cortex still responded to these sounds, showing that mice could process them as a separate sensory input, independent of the sense of touch.

Yet the fact that the mouse auditory system responds to certain noises does not necessarily mean that mice use them for sensing and can recognize objects by means of these noises. To explore this issue, the researchers resorted to AI. They first trained a machine-learning model to identify objects based on neural activity recorded from the auditory cortex of mice. The AI successfully identified the correct objects from neuronal activity alone, suggesting that the mice might be able to similarly interpret these cues. Next, the researchers trained another machine-learning model to identify objects on the basis of recorded sounds made by whiskers probing these objects. The two models – the one trained on neural activity alone and the one trained on sound recordings – were equally successful, which suggests that the neural responses to the whisking were caused directly by the sounds rather than by other sensory information, such as that coming from smell or touch.

These findings led the researchers to the central question of their study: Can mice recognize objects using whisker-generated sounds alone? To address this, Efron and colleagues performed a behavioral experiment. They trained mice, whose touch sensation had been abolished, to recognize aluminum foil solely by its whisker-generated sound. The mice responded to the sounds in a consistent manner, connecting those sounds to the sensory information they represented.

“Our results show that the brain’s whisking network, called the vibrissa system, operates in an integrative, multimodal manner when the animals actively explore their surroundings,” Lampl sums up. This multimodal function, he explains, might have developed in the course of evolution to help mice hunt for prey or avoid their own predators. “Since whisking generates much weaker sounds than does walking, a mouse could rely on it when, for example, choosing whether to walk across a brittle, drier field of crops versus a fresher, quieter one, to avoid being detected by an owl. Whisking could also help a mouse figure out whether a stem is hollow or sufficiently juicy and worthy of a bite.”

By breaking down the boundaries between touch and hearing, the study doesn’t just reveal something new about mice, it opens up a plethora of research directions for future explorations of the brain’s sensory systems, particularly mechanisms by which the brain integrates different types of sensory input. The new findings might also lead to practical innovations in technology.

Science Numbers

Mouse whiskers measure 40 to 80 microns in diameter at the base – roughly the same as an average human hair – and 3 to 4 microns at the tip.

The possibilities are endless. If the brain can simultaneously process sensory information from different sources, the same principles might be used in prosthetics, sensory rehabilitation after brain trauma or perhaps even for enhancing perception in visually impaired individuals. For instance, learning exercises for the blind already exploit the distinct sounds produced by the white cane upon contact with a surface, and this approach could be developed further.

Another potential area for prospective innovation is robotics. Says Efron: “Integrating different types of sensory input is a major challenge in the design of robotic systems. The mouse brain’s whisking system might provide inspiration for technologies that would address this challenge by, for example, helping to create early-warning sensors to prevent collisions, particularly when visibility is limited because of smoke or other visual obstructions.”

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.061 

Article Title

Detection and neural encoding of whisker-generated sounds in mice