Gallup: Republicans Disagree With Democrats Mostly On Government Power, Climate, Education...What About Marijuana?

Americans love their weed. No doubt about it.

A new Gallup poll released Monday confirmed that support for marijuana legalization has grown both among Democrats and Republicans.

However, the partisan gap on the issue is much wider than it was decades ago, as Democrats embrace green reform much quicker than the opposition. And since politics matter more than the will or people, we might even live to see all 50 states with legal cannabis programs, while remaining a Schedule 1 substance at the federal level.

For the past three years, two-thirds of U.S. adults have supported marijuana legalization. In 1969, when Gallup first asked the legalization question, only 12% of Americans supported the issue.

Poll Highlights

As many as 83% of Democrats think marijuana should be legal, compared to 55% of Republicans who share that opinion. This compares to 81% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans having the same belief last year.

There is a 28 percentage-point difference between the opinions of the two parties, larger than it was 20 years ago when both supported it less than 50%.

“Since 2003, Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to say that marijuana should be legalized,” the report reads. “The percentage of each partisan group agreeing with legalizing marijuana increased in lockstep in 2013 and then again in 2022, but the Democratic increase has been modestly larger than Republicans’, resulting in a somewhat bigger partisan gap on this issue when measured last year than 20 years ago. “

Outside of cannabis, the poll revealed that political polarization grew most notably over the last 20 years on matters connected to federal government power, global warming, the environment, education, abortion, foreign trade, immigration, gun laws, the government’s role in providing healthcare and income tax fairness. 

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Photo: Courtesy of 2H Media via Unsplash