Both classic works of political philosophy and modern social scientific research underscore the significance of political tolerance in a well-functioning democracy. By extension, if this civil libertarian norm is vital to already established democratic regimes, then such attitudes are all the more crucial in the context of democratization. Yet, in such a setting—where, arguably, tolerance matters most—this trait is often found in exceedingly short supply. How, then, might we augment tolerant judgements during this transitional period and guard against normatively undesirable outcomes? In order to theorize potential mechanisms, this study examines the determinants of political tolerance in the context of two countries that recently experienced the breakdown of long-entrenched autocratic rule, though with markedly different consequences to date: Egypt and Tunisia. The analysis marshals underutilized survey data, including the most recent waves of the Afro- and Arab-Barometers, to test the robustness of prior findings and advance a novel component in the tolerance equation. First, to better operationalize political tolerance, I go beyond measuring mere affect toward a particular group (the typical gauge in previous comparative studies, given the data limitations), combining that attitude with a desire to limit the same group’s access to the public sphere. Next, in addition to testing the influence of established demographic, dispositional, and contextual factors on tolerance judgements, I hypothesize that “party channeling”—which is effectively a proxy for the salience of formal political diversity and the nascent commitments to the democratic process that this institutional arrangement engenders—is an impactful driver of political tolerance in that it makes acute what is normally a long-term learning process. The empirical findings lend preliminary support for this party channeling theory of democratic learning. The article concludes by articulating some preliminary intuitions on how the key hypothesized antecedent—that is, political diversity—may emerge in this context.