Washington—Dante Bucci is a 22-year-old marketing student who lives in one of Washington’s most hip neighborhoods.
The New Jersey native is clean cut, well dressed and well spoken.
But as a Republican in one of the most liberal cities in America, his political views are kryptonite in the US capital’s dating world, where he frequently finds himself attracted to Democrats.
“A lot of first dates. Not a lot of second dates,” Bucci says of his love life these days. “I think Donald Trump has a lot to do with that.”
In the 2016 presidential election, Trump earned 4 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia.
It’s not exactly great math for a young, single conservative man who backed the real estate mogul.
And with November’s key midterm vote stoking political tensions, Republicans like Bucci are finding that romance is all but dead.
“They want to date someone that they can agree with on some issues,” laments Bucci, who supports abortion rights and gay marriage and calls himself a moderate Republican.
“‘I’m a Republican but…’—I’ve started so many sentences that way.”
Enter: DonaldDaters.com, a website connecting those who support the Republican president.
Its slogan? “Make America Date Again,” of course.
“I felt a real need for this app,” said Emily Moreno, a 25-year-old Republican who founded the site after speaking to many of her friends.
Moreno told AFP that many people in Washington said if they mentioned working for Trump or Republican causes to a potential love match, “the date is shut down—it’s a deal-breaker.”
Four days after launching the site in mid-October, Moreno said the app had been downloaded 20,000 times.
Bucci says that so many of his first dates go off the rails with the first question: “Did you vote for Donald Trump?”
When he says yes, he gets all kinds of responses, not all of them pleasant.
“Sometimes they probe me into why I voted Trump, as if it’s a murder and I’m on trial,” he said, adding that his friends are having similar experiences. “It really is tiring.”
For Bucci, the polarization of America has basically transferred to the dating pool.
“We are in a society where you can only date or be with people that think like you,” he said.
The only other option is one he says his friends have used: Lie about who they voted for.