How similar are liberals and republicans and what separates them
Executive summary
Liberals and Republicans in the United States overlap in basic civic commitments—electoral participation, belief in the country’s institutions by many, and clustering into partisan coalitions—but they now differ sharply in policy priorities, ideological self-identification, and views on race, government’s role and social change, producing high levels of ideological sorting and little overlap at the median [1] [2] [3]. Polling and typology research show Republicans have become more uniformly conservative while Democrats are more internally diverse but lean more liberal than in past decades, which explains both the similarities in civic engagement and the deep policy and cultural divides [4] [5] [2].
1. Shared civic ground: participation, parties and clustering
Both liberals and conservatives participate in the same electoral and civic systems and form coalitions that organize political life; researchers note that people with common political ideologies tend to cluster into the Democratic and Republican coalitions, meaning members of each side use the same institutional levers—voting, parties, interest groups—to pursue different ends [6] [5]. Major surveys find sizable shares of the public identify across a spectrum of ideology (liberal, moderate, conservative), demonstrating common use of ideological labels even as meanings vary, and roughly similar overall engagement in politics among strongly identified partisans [7] [3].
2. Where the overlap has thinned: median positions and polarization
A notable empirical finding is that overlap between the parties has shrunk: contemporary analyses report that an overwhelming majority of Republicans sit to the right of the median Democrat and vice versa—figures such as 92% and 94% have been cited—indicating the parties now occupy distinct ideological spaces with little centrist crossover [2]. That sorting is not merely rhetorical; Gallup and other national polls show record-high shares of Republicans calling themselves conservative and of Democrats calling themselves liberal, reinforcing ideological homogeneity within each party’s active base [3] [4].
3. Policy and moral fault lines: race, government and social issues
Survey-based typologies highlight specific cleavages: racial injustice is a particularly sharp divider, with most Democratic-oriented groups saying a lot more must be done to ensure equal rights while few Republican-oriented groups agree [1]. Similarly, the parties diverge on the size and role of government—Democrats generally supporting a more activist government to address social problems and Republicans favoring smaller government and lower taxes—and on social questions like abortion, affirmative action and civil rights where positions tend to polarize by party [8] [9].
4. Internal diversity: factions within each camp
Despite broad labels, both coalitions contain multiple subgroups: Pew’s typology identifies nine groups including two distinct liberal blocs (Progressive Left and Establishment Liberals) and multiple Republican-oriented blocs from hard-core Faith and Flag Conservatives to more moderate Committed Conservatives and politically disengaged Stressed Sideliners, underscoring that intra-party disagreement and heterogeneity remain meaningful [1]. Polling also shows Democrats retain a substantial moderate and conservative minority even as the party has trended leftward overall, meaning “liberal” and “Democrat” are not perfect synonyms [5] [4].
5. Why the chasm matters: attitudes, identity and cooperation
Psychological and behavioral research finds ideology links to trust and cooperation: liberals on average show slightly greater concern for others’ outcomes while conservatives may prioritize in-group or stability values, patterns that help explain partisan distrust and lower cross-party cooperation during elections and policymaking [6] [10]. These deepened identity cues—ideological, racial, cultural—feed back into political behavior, making compromise and overlap rarer even where institutions remain shared [2] [6].
6. Limits of the evidence and alternative readings
The reporting relied on large national surveys and typologies that reveal averages and coalitional patterns, but they cannot fully capture local variation, historical shifts in party meaning, or why individual voters cross party lines in specific elections; historical accounts show party ideologies have flipped over time and labels carry different meanings across eras, a caution against treating present alignments as fixed [11] [12]. Some scholars and polls emphasize continuity in shared American values—like belief in elections or national greatness across many groups—pointing to areas where liberals and Republicans still converge even amid polarization [1] [3].