13 Things We Just Learned About Conservatives And Liberals In America

Pew Research Center is out with a new study that dissects how Americans of varying political persuasions interact with each other and get informed about politics.

The survey shows that conservatives and liberals usually stick together in their opposing camps and only trust certain news outlets to keep them informed (for consistent conservatives, one source dominates - Fox News).

Here's what we learned from the Pew study:

BuzzFeed is distrusted among all political ideologies, while British news outlets The Economist and BBC are most trusted.

Consistent conservatives don't trust much outside of staunchly conservative news outlets.

Liberals tend to trust less partisan news sources most, but still highly trust liberal-leaning media like The Daily Show and MSNBC.

There isn't much variance between groups when it comes to how many news outlets they look at for political news in a week, but liberals are slightly more varied in their sources.

Facebook dominates as the main online source for political news, but local TV is still the most popular option to keep people informed.

Twitter isn't nearly as popular, but liberals use it for political news more often than any other group.

Most consistent liberals "like" issue-based groups on Facebook.

Conservatives and liberals are highly polarized even when it comes to Facebook. Those on either end of the political spectrum aren't often exposed to opposing ideas on social media.

When it comes to talking politics outside of Facebook, there's more room for disagreement.

Still, those on the far right and the far left mostly stick to their own camps when discussing politics. Those with a mixed political ideology talk politics more with conservatives than liberals.

While people might be exposed to opposing viewpoints during political discussions, when it comes to friends, those on either end of the spectrum are drawn to people who share their political ideology. Liberals are even willing to drop friends who don't agree with them politically.

Some of these insights aren't surprising, but these charts do show how polarized the country is becoming.

For the study, Pew surveyed a representative sample of randomly selected Americans, polling nearly 3,000 people earlier this year.