Ask most people whether the United States is morally divided, and they’ll say yes without hesitating. That answer is partly correct. But a sweeping new Pew Research Center survey of 3,605 U.S. adults — asking whether 15 specific behaviors are morally wrong, morally acceptable, or simply not a moral issue — reveals something more complicated: a country with more shared ground than the headlines suggest, fault lines that cut in directions nobody expects, and one thing that almost everyone, across every demographic, still agrees is wrong.
The data is a genuine conversation starter. Here’s what it actually says.
The One Thing That Still Unites Us
Ninety percent of Americans say that married people having an extramarital affair is morally wrong. That number holds up across party lines, age groups, religious identities, and gender. In a survey full of 50/50 splits and sharp partisan divides, this is the lone finding that looks like national consensus. Cheating on a spouse, it turns out, is the one moral prohibition that cuts across almost everything else.
The contrast with everything around it is striking. On nearly every other behavior Pew tested, Americans are either divided or broadly permissive. Ninety-six percent say eating meat is either acceptable or simply not a moral question. Ninety-one percent feel the same about contraception. Sixty-three percent have no moral objection to patients choosing to end their lives with a doctor’s help. The picture that emerges is of a country far less morally restrictive than its culture wars might suggest — with one notable exception.
The 50/50 Nation
Two topics sit at exact national stalemates. About half of Americans say viewing pornography is morally wrong (52%), while the other half consider it either acceptable or outside the moral realm entirely. Abortion lands in almost identical territory: 47% say it’s morally wrong, while 52% say it’s not a moral issue or is morally acceptable.
These splits are real, but what’s interesting is how Americans are dividing. On abortion, the partisan gap is enormous — 71% of Republicans say it’s morally wrong compared to 24% of Democrats. On pornography, the gap narrows considerably: 65% of Republicans versus 39% of Democrats call it wrong. That’s still a divide, but a smaller one than most people would guess.
What the data also captures is a distinct third category: “not a moral issue.” Many Americans aren’t saying these behaviors are fine — they’re saying morality isn’t the relevant framework. That’s a subtle but meaningful shift in how a large share of the country approaches contested questions.
Where the Partisan Fault Lines Actually Run
The predictable splits are there — Republicans more likely to call abortion and homosexuality morally wrong, Democrats less so. But the data gets more interesting when you look at what Democrats are condemning.
Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to say the death penalty is morally wrong (48% vs. 20%), that spanking children is wrong (35% vs. 12%), and — most surprisingly — that being extremely rich is morally wrong (29% vs. 7%). That last finding is the one most likely to catch people off guard at a dinner table. Nearly a third of Democrats consider extreme wealth a moral problem. Among Republicans, it’s fewer than one in ten.
The death penalty gap deserves attention too. Nearly half of Democrats place capital punishment in the same moral category that Republicans place abortion. The two parties are running parallel moral frameworks that barely overlap — but the specific contents of those frameworks are less obvious than the headlines about culture war would suggest.
The Generational Curveball
Age produces some of the survey’s most counterintuitive findings. Younger Americans (18-29) are the group most likely to consider being extremely rich immoral — one-third take that position, compared to just 10% of adults 65 and older. This age gap holds even within political parties: young Democrats are far more likely to condemn wealth than older Democrats; young Republicans are more likely than their elders to do so as well.
At the same time, younger adults are less likely than older adults to call homosexuality morally wrong — 30% of 18-to-29-year-olds take that position compared to higher shares among every older age group. The conventional read is that younger Americans are more permissive across the board. The wealth finding complicates that. They’re not simply more permissive — they’ve redistributed their moral concerns toward different targets.
Americans Think Everyone Around Them Is Immoral
Perhaps the most globally unusual finding in Pew’s related international research is this: 53% of Americans say the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens are somewhat or very bad. In a 25-country survey, the U.S. stood out as one of the few nations where a majority of people view their fellow citizens as morally deficient. In nearly every other country surveyed, more people rated their compatriots as morally good than bad.
This finding sits in an interesting tension with the survey’s actual behavioral data. When asked about specific behaviors, Americans express mostly permissive views — yet a majority believe the people around them have bad values. The gap between how people judge abstract “other Americans” and how they assess actual behaviors suggests that the moral pessimism Americans feel toward each other may have more to do with political perception than with real behavioral differences.
What the Map Actually Shows
The survey’s headline, that Republicans and Democrats sharply disagree, is true. But the more durable takeaway is structural: Americans are applying moral frameworks more selectively and surprisingly than the binary frame of the culture wars captures. Extramarital affairs: almost everyone agrees. Death penalty, extreme wealth, corporal punishment: significant minorities call these wrong, distributed in ways that don’t neatly fit the usual scripts. Contraception, doctor-assisted dying, homosexuality: broad permissiveness, held quietly by majorities that don’t always make news.
The country is divided. It’s also, in ways the data keeps revealing, more complicated than the divide.