We've heard the quote before--often attributed to Churchill--, "If a man is not a socialist at the age of 20, he proves he has no heart. If a man remains a socialist at the age of 30, he proves he has no head." Substitute "liberal" for "socialist" and the data confirm a trend: people grow more conservative as they grow older. According to a very large data set compiled by the NORC during more than three decades, people are more likely to call themselves "slightly conservative", "conservative", or "extremely conservative" than they are to call themselves "slightly liberal", "liberal", or "extremely liberal". It is only among the youngest age cohort, from 18-30, that the reverse is true.
In 1990 the average American was 32.9 years old. As of 2007, the Census Bureau reported that the average American was 36.6 old -- well past the inflection point at which the balance of opinion flips from liberal to conservative.
Source: GSS
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