Republicans could be poised to enjoy decades of political dominance due to a wide discrepancy in birth rates between conservatives and liberals, a Daily Mail analysis has revealed.
As of 2024, right-leaning couples were reproducing at one-and-a-half times the rate of their left-wing counterparts, according to data from the US General Social Survey.
Conservatives have been outpacing liberals when it comes to reproduction in varying degrees at least as far back as 1974, which is the first year the survey began collecting the data.
Last year, the average number of children born to right-wing parents worked out at 2.18 children per person.
The figure is the same that conservative parents had in 1986, a time when the overall fertility rate was 13 percent higher than it is today.
Liberals had just 1.42 children on average in 2024, meaning they procreate 12 percent less than the general population.
More importantly, liberals have drifted further away from the replacement rate, or the number of children needed (about 2.1 per woman) to replenish subsequent generations.
Even at the peak of left-wing fertility in 1988, the group was still 10 percent below replacement. Today, they are sagging 32 percent below.
The data suggests that if current trends hold, leftism and liberalism could significantly wane in its societal influence.
While it is not guaranteed children will end up adopting their parents’ exact political persuasion, experts have said most people’s beliefs are heavily influenced by socializing with their family.
Psychologists from the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern Denmark demonstrated in 2021 that while genetics is a primary determinant of a person’s politics, parental influence is another key factor in how liberal or conservative one becomes in adulthood.
Other scholarly works bolster the idea that whichever side wins the baby race will eventually count huge victories at the ballot box.
A study published just two days before the 2024 US elections – when the Republican party regained a governing trifecta – found the major rightward shift across Europe can be directly attributed to the fact that conservatives are having more children and grandchildren than liberals.
The US could be in the midst of its own political transformation, especially now fertility rates between the right and the left have diverged after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the General Social Survey.
The biennial survey, which has polled roughly 3,000 adults on a wide array of topics for over half a century, saw a steep drop in the number of people of any political affiliation having children between 2018 and 2021, before and after the pandemic.
For decades, the fertility rates for both sides of the political coin have generally fluctuated in tandem with one another, and this was evident during the pandemic.
Republican politicians are aware that their side has more children. Donald Trump and JD Vance have both used pro-family rhetoric on the campaign trail ahead of them being elected president and vice president last November
But in 2022 and 2024, conservatives bounced back and began reproducing at rates similar to the 1980s and the early 2000s.
Liberals, on the other hand, failed to rebound to their already dismal pre-COVID fertility rates over the last three years.
Much of the discrepancy appears to come down to differing attitudes about marriage and family.
An analysis by the Institute for Family Studies, a right-leaning think tank, found that conservative women are more likely to be married at every age than liberal women.
Data shows married women typically have more children than unmarried women, a fact that highly advantages conservatives.
Marriage rates among moderates closely resemble those among liberals, suggesting that even those who consider themselves centrists may soon find themselves losing ground to the political right.
Republican politicians are very much aware of these dynamics and have sought to capitalize with their rhetoric and policies.
‘I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,’ JD Vance said during the vice presidential debate in October 2024.
The Big Beautiful Bill has a provision that gives each newborn a $1,000 deposit into a savings account. The one-time payment applies to children born after December 31, 2024 and before January 1, 2029
‘I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want it to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family.’
On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump was also eager to recast the GOP as supportive of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court deciding that frozen embryos are children.
The ruling restricted access to IVF in the state and led to fears that people could be held liable for destroying unused embryos.
‘I’m the father of IVF,’ Trump said at an all-women’s town hall in October 2024.
‘We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization, that is all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them.’
Former ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk, who spent over a quarter billion dollars to elect Trump, is also an advocate for large families.
Musk has previously spoken about the need to salvage declining birth rates and has fathered at least 14 children with women including influencer Ashley St. Clair and singer-songwriter Grimes.
Now that Trump and Vance occupy the White House, they have been able to enact policies that could convince more people to start families.
The Big Beautiful Bill has a provision that gives each newborn a $1,000 deposit into a savings account. The one-time payment applies to children born after December 31, 2024 and before January 1, 2029.
Trump also issued an executive order on October 16 that allows employers to offer a separate fertility benefit option alongside standard medical, dental and vision plans. This could make IVF more accessible to families.
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