As the 2024 US Presidential Election looms, new data shows young women hold the most liberal political views in the last 20 years.
Gallup, a US-based global analytics and advisory firm, has been polling women and men in America since 2001 on their political views.
Analysis of the trends from the 20-year study shows a “leftward expansion” amongst young women is growing at a much faster pace than that of their male counterparts, creating a gender gap between young men and women’s liberal political views.
Data from 2001-2007 showed a three percentage point gender gap in young women and men’s liberal political views: 28 per cent of women aged 18-29 in the Gallup study identified as liberal, with 25 per cent of men in the same age category also counting themselves as liberal.
There was a leftward expansion in the next set of data, dated 2008-2016, for both young women and young men, Gallup’s research found: 32 per cent of young women were liberal, compared to 27 per cent of young men – a five percentage point difference.
The latest data from 2017-2024 shows while the rate of young women identifying as liberal grew significantly, the trend of young men identifying as liberal actually declined: 40 per cent of young women, compared to 25 per cent of young men, counted themselves as liberals.
Gallup found the surge of young women identifying as liberal – increasing by 12 percentage points in the last 20+ years – correlates with young women’s stances on causes including the environment, abortion, gun laws and race relations.
Their views on the death penalty, healthcare policy, labor unions, taxes, government regulation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become “moderately” more liberal, the research found, while their stances on defence spending have largely remained unchanged.
The researchers note that young men’s views have also moved closer to liberal positions on many of the same issues that young women moved to more liberal positions on in the last two decades, but at a much slower rate than young women.
The 2024 Presidential Election
Many of the topics that young women are increasingly taking more liberal positions on were discussed during the first debate between presidential nominees Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
On abortion, Democratic nominee Harris said she “absolutely supports reinstating the protections of Roe V Wade” and corrected Trump’s mistruth on abortion that it was legal in certain states to terminate pregnancies in the “seventh, eighth, ninth month”.
“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion that is not happening,” Harris said.
“It’s insulting to the women of America. Understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans — couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments. Working women who are working one or two jobs who can barely afford childcare as it is have to travel to another state to get on a plane, sitting next to strangers to go and get the health care she needs and barely can afford to do it.”
Harris, the first Black woman and first South Asian woman to be Vice President of the United States, condemned Trump’s attempts to “use race to divide the American people”.
“I do believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us,” Harris said.
“And we don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us and especially by race.”