Fewer Americans label themselves as moderates according to recent polls indicating that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state.

According to an August 14 survey conducted by Gallup Poll consulting, “conservative” was the most frequent answer in every region except the District of Columbia. The survey focused on how people label their political ideology rather than their partisan affiliation.

This trend has been going for some time, according to Gallup Poll senior editor Lydia Saad, who conducted a poll in June that suggested that self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1 nationwide.

“I’ve been working at Gallup for 17 years and Americans are typically more likely to prefer the conservative label,” said Saad. “It’s a surprise at the state level, where the conservatives and liberals are tied in some very Democratic states, like Massachusetts, Vermont and Hawaii.”

The Wall Street Journal saw this poll and published an opinion piece Tuesday claiming the New York Times was engaging in a left-wing conspiracy for not reporting this data.

“The poll was taken over a spread-out period from January through June,” wrote opinion columnist Tom Blumer. “I don’t think anyone would want to bet against the percentage of self-identifying conservatives being higher at the end of the polling period than it was in the beginning.”

Other responses include one from John Campbell, director of communications for 21st Century Democrats, who believes that participants of the poll had a broad definition of the term conservative.

“What it comes down to is a problem with nomenclature,” said Campbell. “If you denigrate the term liberal, you’re going to have people call themselves ‘progressive democratic’. It means Republicans are doing a better job at spin. Anyone who considers themselves to be moderate or liberal would have voted Democratic.”

Another who believes these polls indicate an aversion to the label of “liberal” is John Samples, director for the Center of Representative Government at the libertarian Cato Institute who said it could stem from financial concerns.

“The term conservative has always been a complicated one in public opinion polls,” said Samples. “When people select conservative on issues like budgets and spending there is not much of a difference between people who say they are liberals or conservative on social issues. It’s possible it could be a reaction to the economy that you’re seeing since we’re hearing more information about deficits and increased spending. I think there’s more of a pulling back from some of the Obama health care than from Obama himself.”

One factor in this change is that people are abandoning their status as moderates to join either the liberal or conservative camp, said Saad.

“While the percent of liberals is up, it is on a longer-term basis, since 1996 or so,” said Saad. “The percent of conservatives increased just over the past year, but is also higher than in the late 1990s. Compared to the 1990s, political views are a bit more polarized today.”

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