Americans are increasingly identifying as “socially conservative,” as the Joe Biden administration and Democrats push transgenderism for minors, abortion on demand, and a divisive equity agenda in major institutions such as the military and in education.
More Americans in 2023 (38 percent) say they are “very conservative” or “conservative” on social issues than in 2022 (33 percent) and 2021 (30 percent), a Gallup News poll released Thursday found. Concurrently, the percentage of Americans who say their social views are “very liberal” or “liberal” has decreased to 29 percent from 34 percent in the past two years. The portion of Americans who say they are moderate remains at 31 percent.
“For most of the past eight years, Americans were about as likely to say they were liberal as conservative on social issues. This year, there is a more obvious conservative advantage,” the poll report states. “The shift is mostly due to increasing social conservatism among Republicans, at a time when social issues such as transgender rights, abortion and other hot-button concerns are prominent in the national public debate.”
Gallup News noted that the percentage of Americans identifying as socially conservative has not been this high since 2012.
The percentage of U.S. adults who say they are conservative on social issues has increased to 38%, the highest since 2012. https://t.co/U0I4pAJKrw
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) June 8, 2023
The survey found that the increase in socially conservative identification over the past two years applies to nearly all political and demographic subgroups. Republican voters “show one of the largest increases,” going from 60 percent in 2021 to 74 percent in 2023.
“Independents show a modest uptick of five percentage points, from 24 percent to 29 percent, while there has been no change among Democrats (10 percent in both 2021 and 2023),” according to the survey report.
There have also been double-digit increases since 2021 in socially conservative-identifying adults between the ages of 30 and 64. Older adults have been relatively stable on social issues, and conservative social ideology among young adults has seen a “modest increase.”
Even so, the survey does not appear to define exactly what being socially conservative means, and there is much debate within the conservative movement about what is actually being “conserved,” as left-wing ideals erode traditional structures.
Other surveys show that fewer and fewer Americans rank traditional American values such as patriotism and religion as “very important,” while large chunks of all demographics support the legalization of same-sex marriage. At the same time, Americans of all stripes value family time, and a plurality rejects transgenderism and corporate queering.
The Gallup News poll was conducted between May 1-24, 2023, with 1,011 adults in the United States. The margin of sampling error is ± four percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
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