The Gallup demographic research organization finds that: "Liberal ID Has Increased Most Among Young and Senior Women"
Women of all age groups grew more likely to identify as liberal between 1999 and 2021 before drawing back slightly from that position since then. But the steepest increases in liberal ID occurred among women at either end of the age spectrum.
From 1999 to 2013, about three in 10 women aged 18 to 29 consistently identified as liberal, after which the figure rose (a bit unsteadily) to 44% by 2020. The percentage liberal receded slightly to 41% in 2022 and 40% in 2023. The resulting 11-point increase in young women’s liberal identification since 1999 has made what was already the most liberal subgroup of women even more liberal.
Fourteen percent of women aged 65 and older identified as liberal in 1999, but this rose to 21% by 2013 and 25% by 2023, also an 11-point increase overall. Senior women in 1999 were the least liberal female age group, whereas today, they are as likely as middle-aged women to identify as liberal.
Presumably, Republicans' successful efforts to ban abortions is a factor in this. It's obvious why the youngest cohort might be rapidly becoming more liberal; their lives and families are directly impacted as legislators take over what health decisions they are permitted to make. Youth doesn't take such preemptive constraints gladly.
The over-65 set has also been gradually but very steadily becoming less conservative. Though the trend long predates the 2022 Dobbs decision allowing states to ban abortion, these women retain the memory of what life was like before Roe v. Wade, if not themselves, for their mothers.
Gallup concludes:
... a widening of the ideological gaps between men and women over time has been due to women becoming more liberal at a faster rate than men, rather than women and men moving in different ideological directions
From where I sit, we're dragging the country, slowly, in a more humane direction. There really is something about the women.
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