(POLL) Democrats grew more likely to identify as liberal in 2022

The following is an excerpt from Gallup News.

After hovering near 50% in recent years, the percentage of Democrats who identify as politically liberal rose four percentage points in 2022 to 54%, a new high for this group.

At the same time, the 10% describing themselves as conservative is the lowest to date.

Thirty-six percent say their views are moderate, which is typical of the level recorded for Democrats over the past decade.

Longer term, Democrats have been growing more liberal since at least the mid-1990s when Gallup regularly began tracking party groups’ ideological views.

The percentage identifying as liberal was 25% in 1994; it rose to 40% by 2010 and 50% by 2017.

As Gallup has reported previously, increased liberal identification among U.S. Democrats has occurred across all demographic categories, but that shift has been particularly pronounced among White Democrats.

More than six in 10 White Democrats identified as liberal in 2022, representing a 37-percentage-point increase since 1994.

That contrasts with closer to four in 10 Black and Hispanic Democrats identifying as liberal last year, up less than 20 points from 1994.

Ideology Steady Among Republicans and Independents

Republicans’ ideology did not change appreciably in 2022, with 72% describing their political views as conservative, similar to the 74% doing so in 2021. Most other Republicans continue to identify as politically moderate (22%), while few consider themselves liberal (5%).

For their part, Republicans have grown slightly more conservative in recent decades. Roughly six in 10 identified as such in the 1990s, after which it rose to 70% by 2008 and reached a high of 75% in 2020.

Independents’ self-described ideology was also stable last year and has been for most of the past three decades.

In line with the trend, the largest segment of independents today identifies as politically moderate (47%), followed by conservative (30%) and then liberal (21%).

Conservatives and Moderates Remained Largest Groups Nationally in 2022

Roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).

This is consistent with Americans’ ideology on the basis of annual averages since 2015.

During this period, no more than two percentage points has separated moderates and conservatives, while liberal identification has varied between 24% and 26%. (Continued...)

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