Americans under 50 years old are staying liberal as they grow older, Gallup finds

Adults between ages 30 and 49 are actually not any less liberal than adults under 30, new data from Gallup suggests.

A survey released Tuesday found that among adults between ages 18 and 29, 30 percent identify as liberal and 29 percent identify as conservative. Although this bent to the left isn't entirely surprising, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver flags a particularly interesting stat from the survey: that liberals also outnumber conservatives among adults between 30 and 49. In fact, the exact same percentage of adults between 30 and 49 identify as liberal as adults between 18 and 30 do: 30 percent. The percentage of adults identifying as conservative does go up in that age group, but the percentage of adults identifying as moderate also declines.

Silver describes this finding as "pretty new and different," noting that it shows adults over 30 aren't "maturing" into conservatism and moving to the right as is often expected. Indeed, The Associated Press' Nick Riccardi adds that this finding "bodes very poorly for the future of conservatism."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The survey also shows that the number of Americans who identify as liberal has risen 9 percent since 1992, while the number of Americans identifying as conservative has declined a few points. Overall, though, 35 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while 35 percent identify as moderates and 26 percent identify as liberal.

Gallup conducted its survey by speaking to a random sample of 13,852 adults over the phone in 2018. The margin of error is 1 percentage point. See more results at Gallup.