American political ideology as a whole has shifted left in recent years, but women are becoming even more liberal, according to Gallup.
The survey data, released Wednesday, shows that while the country remains largely center-right, the percentage of those identifying as or leaning liberal has increased over the past three decades, and is now just 1 percent under it’s all-time high.
Roughly 36 percent of adults identify as conservative, 25 percent as liberal and the rest identify as either moderate or unsure, according to the poll.
When broken down by gender ideology, women in the youngest and oldest age groups said they were more likely to identify as liberal.
Women ages 18-29 were 40 percent more likely to be liberal in 2023, a slight decrease from 41 percent in 2022 and 44 percent in 2020, but still higher than the 30 percent in 2013. Those ages 65 and older were 25 percent more likely to identify as liberal — a slight increase from the 21 percent reported in 2013.
This is a pet peeve of mine: the term “liberal” has gone through a semantic shift in the US. It used to mean “generally left leaning”. I think maybe the word “progressive” has taken on this role now.
I think the confusion comes from the fact that many European languages always used the cognates of “liberal” to mean “free market”, I.e. “economically conservative”. This is also how the term is used in some academic fields, like economics. But this is precisely the opposite of the other meaning!
It’s pretty clear the article is using the first meaning. They even use “leaning left” interchangeably with “liberal”.
My theory is that since Americans have been interacting with Europeans more online since the 2000s, the terms have become conflated.
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