Democrats Increasingly Identify as Liberal

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

After hovering near 50% in recent years, the percentage of Democrats who identify as politically liberal rose four percentage points in 2022 to 54%, a new high for this group. At the same time, the 10% describing themselves as conservative is the lowest to date. Thirty-six percent say their views are moderate, which is typical of the level recorded for Democrats over the past decade.

Longer term, Democrats have been growing more liberal since at least the mid-1990s when Gallup regularly began tracking party groups’ ideological views. The percentage identifying as liberal was 25% in 1994; it rose to 40% by 2010 and 50% by 2017.

As Gallup has reported previously, increased liberal identification among U.S. Democrats has occurred across all demographic categories, but that shift has been particularly pronounced among White Democrats. More than six in 10 White Democrats identified as liberal in 2022, representing a 37-percentage-point increase since 1994. That contrasts with closer to four in 10 Black and Hispanic Democrats identifying as liberal last year, up less than 20 points from 1994.

Red State, Blue State

 From the Rose Institute:

The governors of the nation’s four largest states, California, Texas, Florida, and New York, face voters in 2022. Beyond determining who will occupy governors’ offices, these contests will shape our nation’s direction in the coming years. The four “mega-states” have established rival and increasingly polarized visions of state government–one blue, the other red. California and New York have become national catalysts for progressive policies, while Texas and Florida have become the most powerful advocates of conservative alternatives. Their governors–Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Kathy Hochul (D-NY), Greg Abbott (R-TX), and Ron DeSantis (R-FL)–have come to embody these states’ highly partisan models. This election thus provides voters in the four states an opportunity to judge not only their governors, but also the blue or red agendas they represent. Moreover, the elections may give momentum to at least two of these governors–Newsom and DeSantis–to sell their states’ competing visions to the nation by running for president in 2024.

Using new survey data, this report highlights four main findings.

• The governors of all four states have positioned themselves to win reelection in 2022 by retaining the support of members of their state’s dominant party, rendering opposition by people outside that party largely irrelevant.[1]
• The four governors are on track to win reelection even though a large share of their constituents are dissatisfied with recent economic and social trends.
• Many residents of these states are considering moving elsewhere, most frequently those (such as Republicans in California and New York) who disagree with their state’s dominant political orientation. Many are interested in moving to a place where their neighbors would have political and policy preferences closer to their own.
• After their expected reelections, at least two of these governors–DeSantis and Newsom–are positioned to carry their states’ policy visions into a national competition for the presidency.

Congress and Polarization

Judge Glock, "The Mismeasurement of Polarization," National Affairs, Fall 2021:

It has become a commonplace of political discourse among academics, pundits, and politicians to claim that one or the other party has become more extremist, or that it has taken a radical position on some particular issue. Most often, those making the charge fail to distinguish the baseline against which the other side has supposedly radicalized.

When those on the left say the right has radicalized, they tend to measure it against the perceived will of the people at the current time, or against some new status quo — such as the Affordable Care Act — that was itself considered leftward radicalism just a few years earlier. When those on the right say the left has radicalized, they tend to measure it against some point in the distant past, or against the long-standing status quo.

What both measures of party polarization fail to take into account are long-term shifts in policy and public opinion that have occurred over America's history. When we look to these changes, it becomes clear that the baseline against which partisanship is measured has not remained static; instead, it has shifted to the left. Both parties have followed this shift over time, with Democrats largely leading the way and Republicans following from the rear.

This changing baseline helps explain why both parties can plausibly claim that the other side has radicalized. For the left — whose adherents measure polarization from the baseline of current policy and opinion, which has itself moved left — Republicans may appear extremist, even if their positions have remained fixed over time. For the right — whose adherents measure polarization against policies and opinions of the distant past, which fell more to the right than they do today — Democrats have radicalized, in the sense that they have followed the shift of policy and opinion to the left of where it once was.

On the whole, American politics has moved, and continues to move, along with policies and the preferences of the American electorate. This may be cold comfort for conservatives, who have witnessed both drift decidedly to the left over the past century and a half. But it can help assuage the alarmism over one-sided polarization that has long plagued our political discourse.

The Poole-Rosenthal scores provide a distorted view of ideological change over time.  

Frances E. Lee, " Patronage, Logrolls, and “Polarization”: Congressional Parties of the Gilded Age, 1876–1896," Studies in American Political Development 30, Issue 2 (2016).  The abstract:

According to the quantitative indicators scholars use to measure political polarization, the Gilded Age stands out for some of the most party-polarized Congresses of all time. By contrast, historians of the era depict the two major parties as presenting few programmatic alternatives to one another. I argue that a large share of the party-line votes in the Congress of this period are poorly suited to the standard conceptualization as “polarization,” meaning wide divergence on an ideological continuum structuring alternative views on national policy. Specifically, the era's continuous battles over the distribution of particularized benefits, patronage, and control of political office make little sense conceived as stemming from individual members' preferences on an underlying ideological dimension. They are better understood as fights between two long coalitions competing for power and distributive gains. In short, the Gilded Age illustrates that political parties are fully capable of waging ferocious warfare over spoils and office, even despite a relative lack of sharp party differences over national policy.

Democrats and Idelogy

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Whereas Republicans nationwide are highly unified in their ideological outlook, with most (75%) identifying as conservative, Democrats are more fragmented. According to Gallup data collected thus far in 2021, the largest subgroup of Democrats are those who describe their political views as liberal, at 51%. The other half are mostly self-described moderates (37%), along with a small group of conservatives (12%).

...

The percentage of Democrats identifying as politically liberal increased fairly steadily from 30% in 2001 to 50% in 2017. It has remained there since then, including today's 51%. As their numbers have expanded, liberals have edged out both moderates and conservatives. But moderates have been holding steady near 38% since 2013, while conservatives have become even more scarce.

...

The liberal wing of the party has had considerable momentum during this century. But despite its gains, it now represents half of all Democrats, with the other half still identifying as moderate or conservative. And while the party is now solidly liberal on social issues, it remains politically fragmented on economic issues.

Although having such a diverse political makeup has its challenges, that diversity could be helping the Democratic Party maintain its edge over Republicans in party affiliation. Even as the two parties are closely split when it comes to firm party identifiers, Democrats have held the significant edge in leaned party for most of the past two decades, including by 48% versus 42% so far this year.

Subversion of Academic Freedom

Samuel Goldman at The Week:

Attitudes toward higher education are sharply partisan, though. A Pew study in August found 76 percent of Democrats but only 34 percent of Republicans believe colleges have a positive social impact. And that difference is reflected in two recent controversies about academic freedom, one at Yale Law School (YLS) and one at the University of Georgia. Disparate in some respects, both incidents involve subversion of the university's core principle of academic freedom in pursuit of knowledge.

In the first case, at Yale, administrators have come under fire for pressuring a student to apologize for hosting a "traphouse" party featuring "Popeye's chicken" and "basic-b--ch-American-themed snacks (like apple pie, etc.)." Recordings show an associate dean and the YLS diversity director threatened professional consequences for the student, whose ostensibly "triggering" activities also included participation in the Federalist Society, an influential right-leaning legal scholarship organization. "You're a law student," they warned, "and there's a bar you have to take."

The Yale story was much-discussed among prominent commentators. The Georgia case has attracted much less attention outside academic circles. On Wednesday, the regents of the University of Georgia system voted to revise its employment policies, making it easier to fire tenured faculty.

On the Left

Justin Ye at The Harvard Crimson:

Of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate, regardless of whether they were eligible to vote, 87 percent supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election — 3.1 percent fewer than Class of 2024 students who indicated they planned to vote for Biden last year.

Those supporting Donald Trump in the election dropped from 7.1 to 6.3 between the two class years. Of those who supported a candidate, 6.7 percent of the Class of 2025 supported Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.

Freshmen not affiliated with any political party rose by 3.3 percent, from 22.6 percent in the Class of 2024 to 25.9 percent in the Class of 2025. The proportion of Democratic freshmen decreased from 57.4 percent last year to 55 percent this year, while the proportion of Republican freshmen decreased from 5.2 percent to 5 percent. Independents make up 11.8 percent of the Class of 2025 and libertarians 1.3 percent.

The proportion of freshmen in the Class of 2025 identifying as liberal remained unchanged from last year — 72.4 percent. Those identifying as “very liberal” rose from 31.7 percent of the class to 35.2 percent between the Class of 2024 and 2025.

Survey of 78% of incoming class of 2025 at Harvard via @thecrimson reveals, as usual, many fascinating details. The lack of political diversity remains striking, and has increased in past 5 years. https://t.co/R2QTAgFUO9 pic.twitter.com/zYfiMqsQAc

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) September 28, 2021

 Agnostics (23.9%) and atheists (17.4%) outnumber Protestants (14.5%).

Is left-wing authoritarianism real?  Sally Satel at AEI:

An ambitious new study on the subject by the Emory University researcher Thomas H. Costello and five colleagues should settle the question. It proposes a rigorous new measure of antidemocratic attitudes on the left. And, by drawing on a survey of 7,258 adults, Costello’s team firmly establishes that such attitudes exist on both sides of the American electorate. (One co-author on the paper, I should note, was Costello’s adviser, the late Scott Lilienfeld—with whom I wrote a 2013 book and numerous articles.) Intriguingly, the researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”

A FIRE survey of college students:

• More than 80% of students report censoring their viewpoints at their colleges at least some of the time, with 21% saying they censor themselves often.
• More than 50% of students identify racial inequality as a difficult topic to discuss on their campus.
• Two thirds of students (66%) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost one in four (23%) say it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.

 

Ideology: Liberals and Conservatives Outnumber Populists and Libertarians

 

Populists - voters who are culturally conservative, economically liberal, make up 14% of the electorate. In contrast, Libertarians - voters who are economically conservative, culturally liberal - make up 6% of the electorate. pic.twitter.com/sYyNCAEnEt

— Echelon Insights (@EchelonInsights) July 7, 2021

Youth: More Engaged, More Liberal

 From the Harvard Youth Poll:

Less than one year after Barack Obama’s election, 24% of young Americans considered themselves to be politically active (fall 2009 poll). Twelve years later, we find the share of politically active Americans increased by half — and now 36% are politically active. The most politically active among this cohort are young Blacks (41% politically active).

Over the last five years, on a host of issues ranging from health care, to climate, immigration, poverty, and affirmative action--young Americans are increasingly more likely to favor government intervention. For example, we found:

• A 19-point increase in agreement with the statement “Qualified minorities should be given special preferences in hiring and education” (now 33%).
• An 18-point increase in agreement with the statement “Government should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth” (now 55%).
• A 16-point increase since 2016 in agreement with “The government should spend more to reduce poverty” (now 61%).
• A 16-point increase in “Basic health insurance is a right for all people, and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide it” (now 64%).
• An 8-point increase in agreement with “Recent immigration into this country has done more good than harm (now 37%).

Ideology and Perception of Taxes

Frank Newport at Gallup:

Our analysis, as we have seen, shows modest support for the hypothesis that views of one's income tax burden directly reflect what one pays in taxes. When we turn to ideology, however, we find significantly more powerful relationships -- including a 26-percentage-point difference between conservatives' and liberals' perceptions that their income tax is too high (58% of conservatives say it is, compared with 32% of liberals) in Gallup's most recent data, from 2021. Similar ideological differences are evident in views of the fairness of one's taxes. (And Gallup's recent review found almost identical differences between Republicans and Democrats.)

Thus, many Americans answer this question about their taxes based on their underlying ideological views of the concept of taxes in general and/or their views of the taxes others pay. This is not surprising, given that much research shows that Americans' ideology -- along a conservative-to-liberal spectrum -- appears to be a fundamental factor in determining their views on much that goes on around them across a variety of social, cultural, economic and personal dimensions. (Why some people end up being conservative and some liberal is itself the subject of much research, including some provocative suggestions that ideological differences reflect underlying genetic differences1.)

Public Opinion and Progressives

 Ruy Teixeira notes problematic issues for progressive Democrats:

* Immigration. The surge at the border is real and Democrats currently lack a coherent immigration policy with a plausible enforcement regime. This makes them vulnerable to typecasting as being in favor of open borders.

* Police conduct. Support for reform is real but strong voices within the party are demanding much more than that. Defund the police and similar demands could re-emerge, particularly in the wake of a police killing that attracts wide attention.

* Crime and public safety. There has been a spike in violent crime and murders, which Democrats are reluctant to talk about. If it persists and Democrats are viewed as being complacent or ineffective in addressing the problem, the potential for working class backlash, and not just among whites, is very real.

* “Anti-racism” and “Anti-bias” training and education. The spread of training and curricular models that are highly ideological and counterposed to the views and values summarized above poses genuine problems. To the extent Democrats are viewed as promoting these models and making them standard within schools, workplaces and government offices, the party’s ability to occupy the center ground will be compromised.

* “Equity”-driven programs. So far, including in the American Rescue Plan, Democrats have been putting their chips down on universal programs and benefits, which disproportionately help blacks and Hispanics because they are disproportionately lower income. However, there is considerable pressure to promote “equity”, which has come to mean equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. This has led to calls for racially-focused programs to eliminate outcome disparities, rather than relying on the provision of universal benefits and opportunities. To the extent Democrats becoming associated with equity in this sense, it also pushes them off the center ground.

Other possibilities could be mentioned, but these examples make clear the contours of the battles that could emerge and that the Democrats will likely not be able to avoid. If they wish to command the center ground of American politics, capitalizing on the strong economic hand they appear to currently hold, they will need to couple that with a conscious effort to steer back to the center on these cultural issues. If not, they will likely fall short of the progress that now seems within their grasp.

Pervasive Polarization

 J.D. Tuccille at Reason:

"Political polarization is having far-reaching impacts on American life, harming consumer welfare and creating challenges for people ranging from elected officials and policymakers to corporate executives and marketers," according to a new paper in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing by researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Wyoming, and four other U.S. universities.

...

The finding that everything is becoming politicized builds on a growing mountain of data. Even before political tensions hit their current fever pitch, a 2018 survey found that "Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world will buy or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue" (the number for the U.S. was 59 percent). In 2020, a separate survey reported that "83% of Millennials find it important for the companies they buy from to align with their values."

...

"[W]hat if polarization is less like a fence getting taller over time and more like an oil spill that spreads from its source to gradually taint more and more previously 'apolitical' attitudes, opinions, and preferences?" Pennsylvania State University's Daniel DellaPosta asked in a study published in June 2020 in American Sociological Review. "[E]ven many initially apolitical lifestyle characteristics, from musical taste to belief in astrology, can become politicized as signals for deeper beliefs and preferences—a tendency most saliently captured in the popular image of the 'latte liberal'."

College Students. Religion, and Ideology

Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed:

Many college students are not gaining the skill sets and knowledge they need to navigate a religiously diverse country, according to a new longitudinal study based on surveys of students across 122 campuses.

Less than a third (32 percent) of college students said they developed better skills to interact with people of diverse beliefs while in college, and nearly three-quarters of fourth-year students earned a grade of C or below on a short, standardized quiz testing their knowledge of eight different religious worldviews, the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) found. The survey was led by researchers at North Carolina State and Ohio State Universities and Interfaith Youth Corps, a nonprofit organization.

Researchers found that student participation in formal courses and activities that build interfaith skills is low and, in some cases, declined over students' college years. And while nearly three-quarters of students in college agreed with the statement that they dedicated time in college to learning about people of a different race or ethnicity (74 percent) or from a different country (73 percent), far lower percentages said they dedicated time to learning about people of different religions.
...
In addition to religious views, students were also surveyed about their attitudes toward a variety of identity groups, including political liberals and conservatives. The authors found, "with some exceptions," that positive attitudes toward politically liberal students generally increased while students were in college, while positive attitudes toward political conservative students increased during students' first year of college but declined to precollege levels thereafter.

Media Coverage of Race

Zach Goldbertg at Tablet:

Countless articles have been published in recent weeks, often under the guise of straight news reporting, in which journalists take for granted the legitimacy of novel theories about race and identity. Such articles illustrate a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at the Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory. But the media’s embrace of “wokeness” did not begin in response to the death of George Floyd. ...

...
There is a body of social science research arguing that shifts in race-related media coverage have a causal effect on racial attitudes. For instance, political scientist Paul Kellstedt has provided evidence showing that shifts in racial attitudes follow shifts in race-related news content. But, while building on Kellstedt’s findings, my own research suggests that not all demographics are equally or even similarly responsive to such media trends. Specifically, I find that the causal effects of race-related media coverage are strongest for white Democrats and liberals, weaker for nonwhite Democrats and liberals, and are largely nonexistent for white Republicans and conservatives. This differential effect is partly due to ideological differences in understandings of racial inequality, which influences how white liberals and conservatives respond (particularly in the moral-emotional sense) to related information.

Like Kellstedt, I compiled dozens of time series of racial attitudes—ranging from perceptions of discrimination and attributions of racial inequality to race-conscious policy attitudes—and ran them through an algorithm that was originally developed by James Stimson to generate singular aggregate indexes of general public policy liberalism. I then added the resulting “racial liberalism” index to my dataset of media term-usage, which provides the basis for the analysis in this article. While many of the terms were strongly correlated with the racial liberalism index, subsequent analysis showed that the latter was most uniquely associated with a scale (which I labeled the “Woke Term-Usage Index”) generated from the usage frequency of terms like, “privileged,” “systemic racism,” and “racial disparities,” in The New York Times.

 

Gallup: Conservatives Down, Liberals Up

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Americans' ideological bent has shifted in the first half of 2020 with fewer people self-identifying as politically conservative in May and June than at the start of the year. There has been a corresponding increase in self-described liberals while the percentage moderate has been fairly steady.

Line graph. Monthly trend from January to June 2020 in Americans' self-identified political ideology. Percentage conservative fell from 40% in January/February to 34% by May/June. Percentage liberal increased from 22% to 26% over the same period while percentage moderate was relatively steady near 36%.

In January and February, an average of 40% of Americans identified as politically conservative. This was up from an average of 37% in 2019 and was tied for the highest rate of conservatism Gallup had recorded in the past six years

Self-Censorship

Emily Ekins at Cato:

A new Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

 Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe. However, centrist liberals feel differently. A slim majority (52%) of liberals feel they have to self‐​censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. This demonstrates that political expression is an issue that divides the Democratic coalition between centrist Democrats and their left flank.

...
 Nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they personally are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known. These results are particularly notable given that most personal campaign contributions to political candidates are public knowledge and can easily be found online.

And it’s not just one side of the political spectrum: 31% of liberals, 30% of moderates and 34% of conservatives are worried their political views could get them fired or harm their career trajectory. This suggests that it’s not necessarily just one particular set of views that has moved outside of acceptable public discourse. Instead these results are more consistent with a “walking on eggshells” thesis that people increasingly fear a wide range of political views could offend others or could negatively impact themselves.

These concerns are also cross‐​partisan, although more Republicans are worried: 28% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and 38% of Republicans are worried about how their political opinions could impact their career trajectories.

The Idea of the Op-Ed Page

In 2017, Jack Shafer wrote at Politico:

As susceptible as the next guy to hating the Times for running pieces I disagree with, I used as kindling to start a trash fire the recent Times page in which K-Sue Park informed the ACLU it needed to rethink free speech. Then, guided by a 2010 article about the history of the Times op-ed page written by University of Maine professor of journalism Michael Socolow, I returned to my senses. His deeply researched piece, “A Profitable Public Sphere: The Creation of the New York Times Op-Ed Page,” demonstrates that from the time its top editors started thinking about adding an op-ed section in the early 1960s, the whole idea was to trigger reader insurrections with outrageous views.

Before the Times op-ed page debuted on Sept. 21, 1970, obituaries occupied the page opposite the editorials. John B. Oakes, the Times editor who almost willed the page into existence, believed that a newspaper’s “deepest responsibility” was to make readers think. “The minute we begin to insist that everyone think the same way we think, our democratic way of life is in danger,” he said in a 1954 speech.

As the Times op-ed page took shape, its editors assembled a list of prospective authors and subjects they could address. One list, preserved in the Harrison Salisbury Papers at Columbia University, proposes soliciting pieces from Communist Party USA head Gus Hall, John Bircher Society leader Robert Welch, oil man and right-winger H.L. Hunt, labor radical Harry Bridges and revolutionary Angela Davis. The page’s concept was to express ideas and opinions the reader couldn’t find on the editorial page or elsewhere in the newspaper. The range and ambition of the page were such that one of the early editors on the page, John Van Doorn, tried (and failed) to hire Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, as an editor in 1971, as Socolow writes elsewhere.

State Politics and Policy

Grossmann, p. 9: "Republicans, as the more nationalized of the two major American parties, had developed mature institutions – such as think tanks, state legislator associations, and grassroots networks -- to promote conservative goals."

Hertel-Fernandez & Skocpol

Across much of America, conservatives can mount powerful state legislative campaigns through three well-funded networks that operate as complements to one another. Think tanks affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN) spew out studies and prepare op-eds and legislative testimony. Paid state directors and staffers installed by Americans for Prosperity (AFP)sponsor bus tours, convene rallies and public forums, run radio and television ads, send mailers, and spur activists to contact legislators. And inside the legislatures themselves, many representatives and senators, especially Republicans, are members of ALEC, which invites them to serve alongside business lobbyists and right-wing advocacy groups on national task forces that prepare “model” bills that the legislators can advance at the state and local level, with assistance from ALEC staffers.

AND THE IRON LAW OF EMULATION CONTINUES...

Tom Steyer and The State Innovation Exchange 

The Troika:

• State Policy Network
• Americans for Prosperity
• ALEC 

The Policy:

• Model Legislation
• Liberals, not so much.

State polarization (update from p. 46 of Grossmann)

The obstacles:

• Path dependence, or as Robert Frost wrote, "way leads on to way."
• Retrenchment is harder than enactment.
• Feds encourage growth of state government.
• Courts may hinder activism.
• MARC:  Americans are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal.  See earlier post on coronavirus

Why Republicans and Democrats Self-Segregate

In 2017, David Wasserman wrote at FiveThirtyEight:

Of the nation’s 3,113 counties (or county equivalents), just 303 were decided by single-digit margins — less than 10 percent. In contrast, 1,096 counties fit that description in 1992, even though that election featured a wider national spread.1 During the same period, the number of extreme landslide counties — those decided by margins exceeding 50 percentage points — exploded from 93 to 1,196, or over a third of the nation’s counties.

Bradley Jones at Pew:

Republicans and Democrats express sharply different preferences about their ideal communities and house sizes. And while large numbers of people in both parties say it is important to live in a community that is a good place to raise children, partisans diverge on whether it is important that a community is racially and ethnically diverse.

Nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say they would prefer to live in a community where houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.

By contrast, a majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (58%) would rather live in a community in which houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are in walking distance.

The ideological differences in community preferences are stark, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in September among 9,895 U.S. adults. Conservative Republicans are about twice as likely as liberal Democrats to prefer a community where the houses are larger and more widely spaced (71% vs. 35%). These overall patterns of opinion are little changed from 2017.

....
But Democrats and Democratic leaners are nearly 30 percentage points more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say it is important to live in a community that is racially and ethnically diverse (77% vs. 48%). And while 42% of Republicans say it is important to live in a community where most people share their religious views, fewer Democrats (25%) say the same.

Twitter Polarization

Aaron Smith and colleagues at Pew:

The political views and primary candidate preferences of Democrats on Twitter differ from those who are not on the platform, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January.

The 29% of Democrats who use the platform are more liberal and less inclined to say the party should elect a candidate who seeks common ground with Republicans than are Democrats who are not on Twitter. They also express different preferences for who should be party’s 2020 nominee.

A 56% majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who use Twitter describe their political views as liberal or very liberal. This share is substantially larger than the 41% of non-Twitter Democrats who describe themselves in this way

Marijuana Use

From Gallup:

The July 2019 Gallup survey found that the likelihood to smoke marijuana varies significantly by gender, age, and political ideology.

• Men (15%) are more likely to smoke marijuana than women (9%).
• At 22%, 18- to 29-year-olds are the most likely age group to smoke marijuana -- about twice as likely as those between the ages of 30 and 64, and seven times as likely as adults older than 65.
• Liberals (24%) are six times more likely to smoke marijuana than conservatives (4%), and twice as likely as moderates (12%).

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act that would federally decriminalize marijuana passed the House Judiciary Committee in November 2019, but, with that bill yet to make it to the House floor and facing an uncertain future in the Senate, the use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, 33 states have legalized marijuana in some way for adults -- whether for medicinal or recreational use; however, only one of those states, Florida, is in the South, which is reflected in that region's lower rate of marijuana users.