Older generations of Americans are much more likely to characterize their political views as contrastive than as liberal, according to a new study from Gallup.
This includes the Baby Boom generation, 44% of whom identified as conservative and 21% as liberal last year. That 23-percentage-point conservative advantage is less than the 31-point edge for the older traditionalist generation, but greater than those for Gen Xer and Millennials.
In fact, Millennials are about as likely to say they are liberal as to say they are conservative.
The results are based on aggregated data from 14 separate Gallup polls conducted in 2014, including interviews with more than 16,000 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older.
The ideological differences across the major generations in the U.S. are steady with generational differences in party preferences, as older generations tend of be more Republican and younger generations more Democratic.
Older generations are also more likely than younger generations to choose an ideological side — liberal or conservative — as opposed to say they are moderate. Whereas 40% of Millennials choose the moderate label to describe their political views, 33% of Baby Boomers and traditionalists do the same.
But those differences in identification as “moderate” don’t explain the liberal-conservative differences, as there are increasingly more conservatives and fewer liberals in each older generation.