Tracking the Decline of the American Moderate: 1992–2024
Since 1992, the share of Americans self-identifying as moderate on a standard 7-point ideological scale has fallen significantly, while liberal and conservative identification hardens at the extremes. Is moderation actually declining — or is the label just losing its social acceptability?
Method
We distinguish ideological sorting (adopting more extreme positions) from affective polarization (intensifying hatred of the other side regardless of policy views), and track both across 32 years of Gallup annual ideology surveys, Pew's Political Typology datasets (2011–2021), and the ANES time series — grouped by birth cohort, education, race/ethnicity, and geography.
Key questions
Which generation has driven the most ideological shift? Is geographic sorting cause or effect? Do college-educated moderates self-sort differently than non-college? Does media consumption explain the trend independent of demographics?
partisan divide over time
full-width timeline of moderate self-identification, 1992–2024