Sharing Political Affiliations

As a whole, sharing your political affiliations is a bad deal.  In the United States with its (essentially) two party system, the population is split about 50/50.  When sharing votes or political associations, you are taking a gamble.

Not only is it a gamble though - overall you are going to come out at a loss.  This is because the positive reaction you get from someone with the same political beliefs does not outweigh the negative reaction you get from someone with the opposite opinion.

If we take a look at this particularly vague bar graph I constructed, we can see the effects of every possible combination.  The darker reds and blues indicate a positive gain, while the lighter colors represent a loss.  The final gray bar represents the average, with the light gray area being the net loss.