The percentage of Americans who describe themselves as “liberal” has reached an all-time high, according a Gallup poll released Friday.
The poll finds that 23 percent of Americans self-identify as liberal, the highest such number since Gallup began measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
That figure, while rising, still lags far behind the number of self-identified conservatives; a 38 percent plurality of Americans say they are conservative, while 34 percent self-identify as moderate.
The rise in liberal identification has been led by Democrats — 43 percent of Democrats now consider themselves liberals, up from just 29 percent at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration in 2000. The number of self-described moderate Democrats has fallen 8 percent since 2000, and the number of conservative Democrats has fallen 6 percent.
In what may be a contributing factor to the nation’s increasingly polarized politics, the number of self-described moderates has steadily fallen over the past two decades; 34 percent now use the term to describe their politics, representing an all-time low in the poll.
Thsi is the second Gallup poll this week to illustrate the nation’s changing political attitudes; a survey released Wednesday found that fewer Americans now self-identify as Republicans than at any point in the past three decades.
