Can we be friends despite our partisan and social identities?

The sharp political divides in the US are stark reminders of the need to reach across the aisle and expand our shared spaces.

- Li Xueying

Imagine a Singapore where a supporter of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) refuses to live next door to someone who votes for the Workers' Party.

Or one in which a Progress Singapore Party supporter forbids his or her child from marrying someone who plumps for the PAP.

These hypothetical scenarios were floated by some Singaporean participants at the International Conference on Cohesive Societies held in Singapore in September, following a presentation on America's social divides by Dr Richard Wike of the Washington-based think-tank Pew Research Centre.

As the director of the think-tank's Global Attitudes Research unit, he has his finger on the pulse of American society - and what's causing it to race in recent times is the animosity from fierce partisanship radiating outwards into everyday life and hardening into schisms along various fronts.

"So Democrats increasingly say: 'I don't want to live near Republicans.' Republicans increasingly say: 'I don't want a member of my family to marry a Democrat.'"

Stanford researcher Iris Hui found that Americans who identify as either Democrat or Republican prefer to live near members of their own party, expressing less satisfaction with their neighbourhood when told that those of a different political stripe live there.

"Depending on the partisan composition, the desirability of a place can increase by 20 per cent when respondents are informed the location has a sizeable presence of co-partisans," she wrote in a 2013 study.

The same magnitude of decline in desirability occurs when respondents are told the opposite.

With less than a month to go before the US presidential election on Nov 5, daily headlines have tracked opinion polls, debate sound bites and heated discussions of campaign issues, as Ms Kamala Harris and Donald Trump press on with their competing claims to best represent the interests of the American people.