The number of liberal young women has skyrocketed over the past two decades and their views on key issues have swayed further to the left, according to an analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.
An average of 40% of women 18 to 29 years old identified themselves as liberal over the past seven years — up from 32% in the prior eight years (the President Obama era) and 28% in the eight years before that (the President Bush era), according to a Gallup study.
The demographic has always had the largest number of liberals throughout the analysis, which reviews data from 2001 onwards, but the gap between it and the other demographics has increased.
The difference in the number of liberal young women and liberal young men was off by just three percentage points during the first seven-year period, but now it’s at a 15-point gap.
It’s nearly impossible to pin the increase in liberalism among young women on one singular event or trend, but a number of factors may have helped influence the demographic as the biggest jump happened over the last decade.
The “#MeToo” movement and a recent increase in abortion bans across the country may have contributed to the change.
But there’s not just a greater number of liberal female 20-somethings, young women’s policy beliefs are more and more liberal.
“[They] aren’t just identifying as liberal because they like the term or they’re more comfortable with the term, or someone they respect uses the term,” said Lydia Saad, the director of US social research at Gallup. “They have actually become much more liberal in their actual viewpoints.”
More young women are particularly shifting left on issues like abortion, gun control, race relations and the environment, according to the analysis.
Since the Obama era, the group has become nearly 20 percentage points more likely to support sweeping abortion rights — one of the biggest issues in the current election after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The shift could prove powerful at the polls if young women — a majority of whom are aligned on several key issues — become a solid voting block, according to the researchers.
The under-30 female voters are “very unified on these issues … and not only do they hold these views, but they are dissatisfied with the country in these areas, and they are worried about them,” Saad said.
“You’ve got supermajorities of women holding these views.”