(GALLUP NEWS) – While notable on its own, the slight leftward shift over the long term in Americans’ political ideology that Gallup has previously documented is even more significant when reviewing the trend among different age and gender groups. Increased liberalism since the 1990s has occurred much more strongly among women of certain age groups, while men’s views have been steadier.
Gallup’s national figures on Americans’ political ideology show the country remains at center-right, with more people identifying as conservative (36%) than liberal (25%) and the rest saying they are moderate (36%). However, the “liberal” percentage has inched up over the past three decades and is currently one percentage point shy of its all-time high. This has occurred as the “moderate” group has shrunk, while the “conservative” percentage has varied narrowly around the long-term average, near 38%.
The following trends detail how these views have changed among each of four age groups of women, and separately of men. The findings are based on annual averages of Gallup’s telephone surveys, generally encompassing 12,000 or more interviews with U.S. adults each year and at least 500 adults in each gender-by-age subgroup.
