Study: Politics ruined Thanksgiving in 2016
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 11/23/17 09:42 AM EST
The political divisions laid bare during the 2016 presidential campaign spread to the Thanksgiving dinner table last year, a new study shows. Politically opposed family members spent up to a half hour less time together last Thanksgiving in the wake of a heated presidential campaign between President Trump and Hillary Clinton.
UCLA professor Keith Chen and Washington State University professor Ryne Rohla tracked the movements of more than 10 million Americans during the last two Thanksgiving holidays, focusing especially on people who traveled from Republican-leaning areas to Democratic-leaning areas, and vice versa.
The study found that politically divided families spent, on average, 20 to 30 minutes less time around the dinner table in 2016 than in 2015. The study estimated a loss of 27 million hours of cross-partisan Thanksgiving discourse.
The study used the services of data-tracking company SafeGraph, which used cell phone data to track a users home location, then compared it to where they were on Thanksgiving Day.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/361653-study-politics-ruined-thanksgiving-in-2016