(TNND) — Gallup offered more evidence that our politics are increasingly polarized as Republicans and Democrats are more likely now to view themselves as conservative or liberal as opposed to moderate.

Republicans have always been most likely to identify as conservative, according to Gallup.

But last year, 77% described themselves as conservative, marking a new high by two percentage points.

Meanwhile, Democrats’ liberal identification has more than doubled over the past 30 years and reached a new high with 55% viewing themselves that way.

The share of moderate Republicans has fallen from 33% in 1994, when the Gallup tracking began, to 18% now.

The share of moderate Democrats has fallen from 48% in 1994 to 34% now.

There is a difference between someone saying they’re liberal or conservative versus saying they are Democrat or Republican.

But the correlations between conservatives and Republicans and liberals and Democrats are as strong as they’ve ever been, said Oklahoma State University politics professor Seth McKee.

And we are “absolutely” becoming a more polarized nation, he said.

The sorting “really is attitudinal more than perhaps demographic of late, which is a pretty interesting development,” McKee said.

The results of the 2024 election show we may not be as racially polarized, but a minority who voted for President-elect Donald Trump is more likely to be conservative, or at least moderate, McKee said.

Overall, Gallup found 37% of Americans consider themselves conservative, 34% consider themselves moderate, and 25% consider themselves liberal.

Back in the early 1990s, moderates were the biggest chunk of the population, Gallup said. Now, they are a few percentage points behind conservatives.

The American National Election Studies measures something called “affective polarization” to gauge how warmly Americans feel about folks on the other side of the political aisle.

Data for the 2024 election cycle isn’t available yet, but negative feelings for rivals had been on the rise through at least the 2020 election.

A different ANES measurement shows 44% of voters in 2020 were considered “strong” partisans, up from just over 30% who fell into that grouping 20 years ago. Meanwhile, the shares of both “weak” partisans and independents fell.

Just around 12% of voters were true independents – the critical and unattached voters who can help sway the outcome of an election.

Another site, Voteview, shows members of Congress are also moving to the right or left of the ideological spectrum.

Go to the graph of Congress in the early 1990s, and about a dozen Republicans were more liberal than the most conservative Democrat in the House.

About 15 Democrats overlapped with the territory occupied by the most liberal of Republicans.

Now, there's no overlap.

“Now, you can just drive a truck through (the gap between liberals and conservatives in) the U.S. House,” McKee said of the space between the parties on the Voteview graph.

The growing polarization often rewards candidates who run on more extreme platforms, McKee said.

“And then we talk about primaries,” he said. “What if a Republican or a Democrat wants to show some courage? And then someone else attacks them. And then you get some primary opponent who's more extreme than you and might take you down.”

The electoral rewards system perpetuates the growing polarization, McKee said.