Poll: 1 in 3 Americans dreads political talk at Thanksgiving

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bring on the turkey — but maybe hold the politics.

Thanksgiving is Glenn Rogers’ favorite holiday, when people gather around the table and talk about things to celebrate from the past year. But Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t something everyone in the Rogers family is toasting.

“For the most part, we get to the point where we know that we’re not going to agree with each other and it gets dropped,” says the 67-year-old manufacturing consultant, who says he voted less for Trump than against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

With a cascade of sexual misconduct scandals now echoing similar allegations against Trump during the campaign, tempers on the subject of Trump may not have cooled, says Rogers. “When you start talking about it now, there’s still some, I think, real animosity when you start talking about character.”

Rogers is among more than a third of Americans who say they dread the prospect of politics coming up over Thanksgiving, compared with just 2 in 10 who say they’re eager to talk politics, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Four in 10 don’t feel strongly either way.

Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to say they’re uneasy about political discussions at the table, 39 percent to 33 percent. And women are more likely than men to say they dread the thought of talking politics, 41 percent to 31 percent.

Those who do think there’s at least some possibility of politics coming up are somewhat more likely to feel optimistic about it than Americans as a whole. Among this group, 30 percent say they’d be eager to talk politics and 34 percent would dread it.

The debate over whether to talk politics at Thanksgiving — or not — is about as American as the traditional feast itself. By Christmas 2016, 39 percent of U.S. adults said their families avoided conversations about politics, according to the Pew Research Center.

But Americans are still trying to figure out how to talk about the subject in the age of Trump, and amid the sexual misconduct allegations that have ignited a new debate over standards for conduct between men and women. The conversation, some analysts and respondents say, touches on identity among people who group themselves by other factors, such as family, friendship or geography.

Ten months into Trump’s difficult presidency, he remains a historically unpopular president and a deeply polarizing force in the United States. His drives to crack down on immigration in the name of national security and the economy cut right to the question of who is an American.