About this research

This Pew Research Center study goes beyond Americans’ partisan attachments and vote choices to explore the values and attitudes that underlie the political landscape and the Republican and Democratic parties. We did this by creating a political typology, which classifies the public into nine groups based on their responses to 30 questions about government, economics, immigration, elected officials and other topics. To learn more about this project, jump to “About the political typology.”

Why did we do this?

Pew Research Center conducts research to help the public, media and decision-makers understand important topics. We have studied Americans’ political values and attitudes, and their views on politics more broadly, for decades. This is the ninth version of the political typology; the first was conducted nearly 40 years ago.

Learn more about Pew Research Center.

How did we do this?

We surveyed 10,357 U.S. adults from Nov. 17 to 30, 2025. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel. The survey represents the views of the full U.S. adult population. We then used a statistical technique called cluster analysis to divide people into nine groups. (For more on the process of dividing people into groups and surveys used for analysis, jump to Appendix B.)

Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed responses and the survey methodology.

Order and Opportunity Left are the largest group in the political typology, making up 18% of the American public. They generally support a larger federal government with more services and are critical of some aspects of the economic system. But they couple this with a greater sense of economic individualism than the typology groups more firmly on the left.

Allie Sullberg

Order and Opportunity Left are one of nine groups in Pew Research Center’s 2026 Political Typology. To learn more about the typology, start with the overview. To find which group is your best fit, take the quiz. 

Across many issues, Order and Opportunity Left express a desire for order and safety in society. They support more restrictive border policies and are concerned about violent crime in the country. They also are more supportive of law enforcement powers than groups to their left.

Overall, they tilt Democratic in their political preferences and partisan identification: 65% are Democrats or independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, and those who voted in 2024 backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by about three-to-one. Still, a quarter are Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. They make up substantial shares of both partisan coalitions, reflecting their large size overall.

Order and Opportunity Left are:

• Socially moderate. They have liberal – though not maximalist – views on abortion and same-sex marriage, while their views on gender identity are more closely shared by more conservative groups.
• Racially and ethnically diverse – 41% are White, 26% are Hispanic, 21% are Black and 8% are Asian.
• Fairly religious. Most (71%) say religion is at least somewhat important in their lives, and they are more likely to affiliate with a religion and to regularly attend religious services than other groups that are majority Democratic.
• Economically pinched. They are more likely to have lower incomes than most other groups. Like Left-Out Left and Tuned-Out Middle, most don’t have savings to cover their expenses for a few months if they lost their job or faced some other financial emergency.

What is the political typology?

Pew Research Center’s political typology divides the American public into nine political groups based on responses to 30 questions about people’s social and political values and beliefs.

The goal of this long-standing project is to go beyond partisan leanings or vote choices to provide a deeper understanding of the American political landscape. This is the ninth version of the political typology – the first was conducted nearly 40 years ago.

These questions were asked in a survey of 10,357 U.S. adults conducted Nov. 17-30, 2025, using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel – a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults.

For more on the cluster analysis process used to create the groups, the questions used, and how we look at data across multiple surveys, visit Appendix B.

Take the typology quiz to find out which political typology group you fit into.

Political affiliation, voting and engagement

About two-thirds of Order and Opportunity Left associate with the Democratic Party, but many do not have strong ties – 29% are Democratic-leaning independents. A quarter of the group are Republicans or Republican leaners, while 10% do not express a partisan lean.

Roughly six-in-ten (59%) describe themselves as politically moderate, while 20% say they are liberal and 16% say they are conservative.

Order and Opportunity Left are less politically interested and active than other Americans:

• 18% say they are very or extremely interested in politics, compared with 29% of the public overall and more than 50% of those in the most politically engaged typology groups.
• Fewer than half (46%) voted in the 2024 presidential election. Those who did vote backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump (75% vs. 22%).
• 50% say it really matters who wins control of Congress in the 2026 elections (60% of Americans overall say this).

Key attitudes and beliefs

Order and Opportunity Left place more trust in the military and police than groups to their left. They also are more likely than those in these other groups to see violent crime as a very big problem for the country, and they are more open to the idea of allowing police officers to stop and search anyone resembling a crime suspect.

They take moderate positions on immigration. Six-in-ten Order and Opportunity Left favor a military presence at the U.S.-Mexico border, and they are much more likely than other Democratic-oriented groups to see illegal immigration as a big problem for the country. But they do not support widespread deportation and detention of those in the country illegally, and they overwhelmingly say immigrants in the country illegally face discrimination. By wide margins, they also oppose the suspension of asylum applications and pauses on visa applications.

They have mixed views on sexuality and gender identity. Roughly half (51%) say same-sex marriage is neither good nor bad for society (the remainder are about evenly split). And while 71% view gender as being determined by sex at birth and 51% say they are not comfortable with the use of nonbinary pronouns, 62% also say transgender people face a lot of discrimination.

More than eight-in-ten (84%) back requiring photo voter identification to vote. But they also are more likely than groups to the right to favor automatic voter registration (65%) and allowing any voter to vote by mail if they want to (70%).

More respectful of authority, traditional than other left-oriented groups

About three-quarters of Order and Opportunity Left (74%) describe themselves as “respectful of authority” – a far higher share than in other majority-Democratic groups.

And while only about a third (32%) view themselves as “traditional,” much smaller shares of groups to their left say this.

They are also less interested in visiting other countries (40%) than other groups with a Democratic tilt.

Jump to the detailed tables to learn more about Order and Opportunity Left and the other typology groups.