Despite a polarized, partisan political environment, most voters who consider themselves a member of a party say they have a close friend on the other side of the aisle, according to the latest national NBC News poll.
However, Democrats in the poll were less likely to say they have a close, cross-party friendship, the results show.
More than 8 in 10 Republicans (82%) said they have at least one close friend who is a Democrat, while a little over 6 in 10 Democrats (64%) are close friends with a Republican — a gap of 18 percentage points.
That difference is most pronounced among voters who are most loyal to each party and more ideological.
Voters who identified themselves as moderate, meanwhile, were also more likely to have a close friend of the opposite party.
Self-identified moderate Republicans (87%) were 8 points more likely to say they have a close Democratic friend than conservative Republicans (79%). By the same token, moderate Democrats (78%) were 21 points more likely to say they have a close friend who is a Republican than liberal Democrats (57%).
Among voters categorized as "core" GOP supporters, 77% have a close Democratic friend, while 90% of "soft" Republican voters do. There was a similar gap between "core" Democratic voters, at 57%, and "soft" Democrats, at 73%, when it comes to having a close Republican friend.
Other factors, like age, gender and college education, did not have notably large effects on how likely people were to say they had a cross-partisan friendship.
However, religion stood out: Republicans who attended religious services more frequently were slightly less likely to have a Democratic close friend, while more religious Democrats were the opposite. Democrats who frequently attend religious services were about 10 points more likely to have a Republican close friend, according to the poll.
The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Oct. 24-28 via a mix of telephone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
