TL;DR:
- Democrats grew more likely to identify as liberal in 2022
- Nationally, conservatives and moderates remain largest ideological groups
- Republicans still mostly conservative, at 72%
WASHINGTON, D.C. — 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.
The increases in Democrats’ liberalism by gender, age and education are similar to the 29-point increase among all Democrats since 1994. One exception is 30- to 49-year-olds, among whom liberal identification has risen 35 points, with much of that increase occurring in just the past year.
Via Gallup