Liberal vs Democrat refers to the different beliefs, ideals and preferred policies of America’s two major political parties. The Republican Party is economically capitalist and culturally traditional while the Democratic Party is socially progressive with greater government regulation. While Democrats agree on most problems like economic inequality and racism, they divide over how much should be done to fix them and over how radical the solutions should be. They also disagree on a range of issues including whether corporations should make a fair amount of profit, whether taxes should be raised on the wealthy and whether government policy should take into account religious beliefs.

A stereotypical view of liberals is that they want to tax the rich and spend it on things like social programs, the welfare system and free healthcare. Conservatives, however, believe that a strong economy is the best way to improve people’s lives and that government should only interfere when it is necessary.

In the past, this difference in philosophy has created cracks in the Democratic Party with some groups becoming more liberal than others and this remains true today. For example, the newest group in Pew’s typology — Outsider Left — is more liberal than any other group in our data and a lot more so than the largest current group, Mainstream Democrats. But even among this younger group, there are differences in ideology with some members being more liberal than others and some being more radical than the rest of the group. The overall trend is that over the past eight years, there has been a dramatic shift towards liberalism among Democratic voters and a slight move towards conservatism among Republicans.