Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
The figures are based on combined data from 13 separate Gallup polls, including interviews with more than 18,000 Americans, conducted in 2013.
When Gallup began asking about ideological identification in all its polls in 1992, an average 17% of Americans said they were liberal. That dipped to 16% in 1995 and 1996, but has gradually increased, exceeding 20% each year since 2005.
The rise in liberal identification has been accompanied by a decline in moderate identification. At 34% in 2013, it is the lowest Gallup has measured, and down nine points since 1992. Moderates had been the largest ideological group throughout the 1990s, and competed with conservatives for the top spot during the 2000s. Since 2009, conservatives have consistently been the largest U.S. ideological group.
The shift toward greater liberal self-identification has been led by Democrats. Currently, 43% of Democrats say they are liberal, a nearly 50% increase from 29% in 2000. Over the same period, the percentage of Democrats identifying as moderate is down to 36% from 44%, and conservative identification is down to 19% from 25%.
Republicans have become more likely to describe their political views as conservative over the past 13 years, from 62% in 2000 to 70% in 2013.
The percentage of Republicans saying their political views are moderate has dropped by an equivalent amount, from 31% to 23%. To some degree that may be a function of declining Republican Party identification in the U.S., now at a 25-year low of 25%. The smaller group of present Republican identifiers is likely more ideologically homogeneous than the larger group of Republican identifiers from a decade ago.
I have to admit that I am still puzzled by the size of the number of Americans who call themselves conservatives, but I really believe that these numbers are shifting faster than may be evident right now, and that if Gallup were to alter their methods of poll taking they would find a larger liberal segment of the population that simply does not respond to polls using the conventional methods.
If Gallup sent out a mass text to cellphone users for instance, with a simple yes or no option, I bet this number would change dramatically.
However it is the trend which is the story here, and the trend is definitely favoring those of us on the liberal side of the ideological divide.