This last election cycle has me looking for a new party. My friends are all over the place politically. If they go on and on we no longer remain friends. I will tolerate light short political discussions but not much more.
I have a number of friends whose political compass is opposite mine. However, we don’t let politics get in the way of sharing in activities we enjoy. My long-time friend from high school is a “fiscal conservative, social liberal”. We usually laugh at each other when something goes wrong for our favored issue or candidate. He taught his kids to parrot to me “Obama just wants to take our money”, so I told mine to tell him “Republicans just want to destroy America”. Another friend is a xenophobic gun-rights guy, but we do a lot of bicycling miles together. If you can get to the point in a friendship where you can laugh at one another while pointing out facts and admit they sometimes make a good point, then you have a good friend. If you let something like politics get in the way, well, it maybe was not much of a friendship.
I think it depends on how you define “opposed.” The vast majority of my friends are some flavor of left-of-center, but that is a broad category which includes, for example, people who think Hillary Clinton is great and people who think she’s a Wall Street shill and a vote for a third party would be better.
Quite a few. I’m pro-choice; my baby sister is pro-life. I support the right to private gun ownership–in fact, I wouldn’t mind if learning how to handle a weapon was a requirement for high school graduation – but I also want mandatory registration, gun safes & locks and regular certification for owners, so I piss off people on both sides of the gun control debate. I support the death penalty; most of my friends oppose it. And so forth.
In theory I could be friends with a conservative. In the real world, however, I never run into one. Just one of the many advantages of living in the Pacific Northwest. I have only a hand full of friends, and am not on Facebook. Everyone I interact with is left of center. The only exception is my in-laws, who I see once every two years or so.
I’m very often in that position because many of the people who happen to be the nicest are also into wingnut politics, conspiracy theories, etc. So I just avoid talking politics and bite my tongue / change the subject when it comes up. Unfortunately, the people who seem to share my opinions have also been very difficult to connect with on a personal level. It’s hard to reconcile and feels like a Franz Kafka story at times.
I am a moderate libertarian so I don’t really fit in with many mainstream beliefs. I can sound libertarian, conservative or blase depending on the issue. That said, I don’t pick friends based on political beliefs. I simply don’t care about that over general personality and demeanor.
Most of them. Online, as IRL, I ignore them. I’m happier that way and take considerable moral high ground glee in how stupid they are.
My siblings are liberal, I would say a slight majority of my friends are liberal, too - or half. (that is, friends on Facebook.)
I also have a lot of friends from China. This makes me have to be quiet around them whenever topics come up about Taiwan independence, China’s claim to the South China Sea, the Communist Party, etc. (I think China’s claim to the South China Sea is bogus, that Communism is bad, etc.) So there’s that, too.
Pretty much everybody. My stepmother’s a stone cold racist, and my sister, my stepsister and their friends are all SJWs. I don’t really have any non-family Facebook friends so in general .only my dad talking about football doesn’t run contrary to something I believe.
My friends and family members are all over the political and religious spectrum. Tree hugging hippies, bible thumpers, gay, straight, pro gun, anti-gun, cops, prosecutors, defense lawyers, dope smokers, witches, atheists, Trumpers, Bernie Bots, Hillary supporters, libertarians, pacifists, vegetarians, meat eaters, actors, artists, musicians, stage crew…even some perverts that don’t dig SEC football. You name it and if it doesn’t involve harm to children or cruelty to animals, I’m probably friends with someone that is into it.
An emoticon is not an adequate replacement for a full stop/period. 
I grew up in a conservative part of California so I have a good mix of liberal and conservative from back in the day but the I went to a conservative college and work is a conservative industry so now the Conservatives out number the liberals. That being said I’m libertarian so I still disagree with most of them.
Nearly all of my friends are supporters of the parties on the “left” of Australian politics. There are a couple of relatives and friends that support the “right” of Australian politics. However I am a member of the Socialist Equality Party and have little common ground with any of the parties that they endorse. From my point of view all the existing parties are on the right and are just slicing and dicing capitalism in different ways and picking different “winners”.
Many Facebook pages are devoted to hobbies and other interests most of which have nothing to do with politics. so say you are friends with persons who like hockey, model trains, and Star Wars, why discuss politics?
In fact in my world its rarely brought up besides just because your say liberal on one issue does not mean you have the same views on other things.
When I was a kid, we had a lot of gatherings with extended family.
The women sat in the kitchen and talked, the men headed down to the club cellar to drink and play cards.
My father and my uncles would sit around the table and somebody with express a political opinion. Somebody would agree, somebody else would disagree. The discussion would lead to an argument, which would get a little heated. Soon the shouting would start, an if you weren’t one of the assholes then you were one of the dumb sons of a bitch.
Then it would get quiet.
Finally somebody would say, ‘Are we playing cards or what?’, and the game would resume.
That is politics among family and friends.
You disagree a little, you argue a little, maybe you shout a little,
and then you go back to playing cards.
My friends from college (small, conservative christian college) are all right wing conservatives, politically and theologically. Mike Huckabee is almost far enough to the right for them. We agree on very little. They can’t stand Trump, which is something.
My family ranges from basically agreeing with me on most stuff, to my nephews who are both birthers and Trump supporters. (They follow my ex-BIL’s POV there, my sister is much closer to agreeing with me on most things.)
My political views aren’t particularly well represented by a major party in the US or UK, so I don’t have a lot of FB and IRL friends whom I agree with on everything.
My husband and parents are more fiscally liberal and more socially conservative than I am, for example.
This causes interesting debates, not problems, for the most part.
I have relatives who are pretty liberal and we disagree on alot of things but you know what? A redneck relative who owns a trucks, tools, and is good at fixing things or helping them with projects or even if they need things moved - is a pretty darn good thing to have. Our liberal relatives tend to not want to get their hands dirty and never seem to be available to help on things or they want to argue too much. Plus you cant haul much in a Prius.
I not very enthusiastic for political argument, especially if I think someone is just regurgitating some glurge they’ve heard that happens to support their prejudices.
Regarding actual friends and acquaintances, rather than Facebook “Friends”, I work in the oil industry, which tends to skew conservative (at least for Americans). Politics rarely comes up in a work setting, however. When it does, I generally try to gently steer the conversation away if I feel it’s going to be…unrewarding. Only a handful of times have I really had to make it clear that either we talk about something else, or we stop talking.
Among my Facebook “Friends”, again politics tends not to come up very often, perhaps because it might reduce the number of opportunities to post pics of ones’ kids, or of themselves in whatever restaurant/bar/shopping mall/park/tourist attraction they happen to be in at the moment. Between 5 and 10 of the Facebookers I know are the types who feel compelled to repost every partisan, racist or otherwise useless piece of political bullshit they come across. Of this group, all but one are apparently conservative. I just skip over all this crap, perhaps with a slight shake of the head when I see something especially egregious.
Hmmm, if one gets the impression that I am less than taken with the whole Facebook experience, I guess one would be right.