Who enjoys sex more: liberals or conservatives? What science says about sex and politics

Does political ideology influence desire, pleasure and sexual satisfaction? Research suggests that liberals and conservatives may approach sexuality differently — and some studies have even found small differences in sexual satisfaction. But does that really mean one side has better sex? The answer is more interesting than the headline.

If you spend enough time scrolling through social media, sooner or later you will find people debating almost anything: what blue whales eat, how the pyramids were built, or whether liberals have a freer and more satisfying sex life than conservatives.

Which naturally raises a few questions:

• Who has more satisfying sex?
• Who has more sex?
• Who is more sexually adventurous?
• And who actually enjoys it more?

Today, we are turning to science to answer questions you may not have had 30 seconds ago.

Some research has found that people on the political right report slightly higher sexual satisfaction, while people with more liberal views tend to report greater sexual openness and more varied sexual behaviour. But the differences in satisfaction are relatively small, and the evidence does not show that being conservative causes better sex.

So your political ideology may tell us something about your attitudes towards sex.

It tells us much less about whether the sex is actually good.

Let’s get into it.

Do conservatives have better sex than liberals?

You may have come across headlines claiming that conservatives have better sex than liberals.

There is some evidence behind the claim. But there is also a rather large asterisk.

A YouGov analysis of sex and politics comparing political orientation with sexual happiness found that people towards the right of the political spectrum reported somewhat greater satisfaction with their sex lives.

However, YouGov also stressed that the differences were not substantial and that the results were correlational.

In other words, becoming more conservative is not a scientifically validated technique for improving your sex life.

Research by Hatemi, Crabtree and McDermott also found associations between political orientation and sexual behaviour. Their work suggested a broad pattern in which liberals tended to report more sexually adventurous behaviour, while greater reported sexual satisfaction was associated with conservatism.

That gives us an interesting distinction: sexual variety and sexual satisfaction are not the same thing.

You can explore more.

You can have more partners.

You can be more permissive about sex.

And none of those things automatically means that you enjoy your sex life more.

Are liberals more sexually open?

On average, research suggests that people with more progressive political views tend to express more permissive attitudes towards certain aspects of sexuality.

These may include:

• Sexual diversity
• Non-traditional relationships
• Masturbation
• Sex outside marriage
• Erotic exploration
• Greater autonomy in intimate life

People with more conservative views, meanwhile, tend to place greater emphasis on traditional sexual norms, commitment and moral frameworks around sexuality.

Haidt and Hersh's research on sexual morality found differences in how liberals and conservatives evaluated particular sexual behaviours. Conservatives tended to bring a broader range of moral concerns into those judgements, while liberals placed more emphasis on individual autonomy.

Hatemi and colleagues similarly found a relationship between political orientation and patterns of sexual behaviour.

But there is an important limitation whenever we talk about groups like this: averages describe groups. They do not describe every person in them.

Two people who both identify as liberal may have completely different sex lives. The same is obviously true for two conservatives.

Political labels are useful for studying patterns.

They are terrible foreplay.

And being sexually open does not necessarily mean constantly looking for something new. As we explore in our article on curiosity in sex and intimacy, curiosity can simply mean paying more attention to sensation, communication and your partner instead of repeating the same sexual script on autopilot.

Sexual freedom and sexual satisfaction are not the same thing

This is where the subject becomes much more interesting.

One of the easiest assumptions to make is:

More sexual freedom = more sexual satisfaction.

But sexuality is not an equation with that few variables.

A person can have a highly varied sex life and still feel anxious, disconnected or dissatisfied.

Another person may prefer a much more traditional sexual relationship and experience a high level of pleasure, connection and fulfilment.

From a sexological perspective, what someone does sexually is only part of the picture.

We also need to look at how that person experiences it.

Things such as:

• Communication
• Trust
• Relationship quality
• Emotional safety
• Self-esteem
• Stress and anxiety
• The ability to express desires and boundaries
• The ability to stay present during intimacy can completely change the experience of the same sexual encounter.

Self-esteem is particularly easy to underestimate. When confidence becomes dependent on erection quality, duration or your partner's reaction, sex can start feeling more like an evaluation than an experience. We explore that relationship further in our guide to male self-esteem and confidence in bed.

At MYHIXEL, we often come back to this idea: sexuality is not only about increasing stimulation or doing more.

Sometimes improving sex means becoming more aware of what you are already experiencing.

That is one of the ideas behind mindful sex for men: learning to stay closer to sensation instead of constantly monitoring performance, expectations or what should happen next.

So, who actually enjoys sex more?

If we put the available research together, the most accurate answer is:

Some studies suggest slightly higher self-reported sexual satisfaction among conservatives, while liberals tend to report more permissive sexual attitudes and greater sexual variety. But the evidence does not establish that either ideology inherently produces a better sex life.

And that distinction between association and causation matters.

Political ideology is connected to many other aspects of life: values, religion, age, social environment, relationship choices and cultural context, among others.

So when two variables appear together, we cannot simply assume one created the other.

Maybe the more useful question is not:

Which political group has better sex?

But:

What conditions make sex more satisfying, regardless of politics?

That is a question sexology can do much more with.

Can political differences affect a relationship — and your sex life?

This is where sex and politics stop being an abstract debate.

Because politics sometimes follows us home.

And occasionally all the way into bed.

If you are dating someone with different political views, that difference does not automatically mean the relationship is doomed.

Research on political identification and romantic relationships suggests that partners are frequently politically similar, and political compatibility can form part of relationship dynamics. But party labels alone cannot tell us whether a couple will have a satisfying relationship.

The important question is often what the disagreement represents.

A difference of opinion about tax policy might have very little impact on your daily relationship.

A political disagreement that reflects fundamentally different views on family, gender roles, reproductive decisions, equality or personal rights may feel far more important.

That is why political differences in relationships cannot really be reduced to:

“We vote differently.”

Sometimes the difference is political.

Sometimes it is actually a difference in core values.

And those are not quite the same thing.

What couples do with those differences matters too. Being able to talk about difficult subjects without turning disagreement into criticism, rejection or contempt is part of the same communication process that affects intimacy. If that is something you want to work on, our guide to communication about intimate health in a couple looks at how to create safer conversations around needs, boundaries and concerns.

What happens when politics enters the bedroom?

We also have to consider the way political disagreement is handled.

News cycles, social media and constant political discussion can keep us in a state of argument, irritation or mental alertness.

And eroticism usually requires a very different mental state.

Intimacy tends to benefit from attention, emotional availability and a sense that you can stop monitoring the outside world for a while.

If an argument becomes contempt, criticism or unresolved tension, it can become harder to move from:

debate → connection

or

defence → desire

Your body does not care which side won the political argument.

It just knows you are still arguing.

There is another layer to this.

Once you start worrying that tension is affecting your erection, desire, climax or your partner's experience, the original conflict can become a performance problem in your head.

Now you are not only thinking about the argument.

You are checking whether your body is responding “correctly”.

That type of self-monitoring can quickly make intimacy feel like a test. Our article on sexual performance anxiety after a bad experience explains how that cycle can develop and why trying harder is not always the answer.

What actually tends to make sex better?

This may be the least politically exciting conclusion in the article.

But probably the most useful one.

From a clinical and sexological perspective, a satisfying sex life is much more likely to develop when people can:

• Feel safe with their partner
• Talk openly about sex
• Express desires and boundaries
• Manage stress
• Remain curious
• Make space for intimacy
• Stay present during sexual experiences
• Experience pleasure without turning every encounter into a performance test

Notice that none of those requires checking someone's voting record.

This is an important distinction because we often search for external explanations for sexual satisfaction:

More novelty.

More frequency.

More stimulation.

More techniques.

But sometimes the biggest barrier is not what is happening physically.

It is what is happening mentally.

And some of these skills can actually be practised. Body awareness, recognising arousal earlier, communicating with a partner and responding differently to pressure are all part of what we mean by sexual training for men.

The goal is not to turn sex into another task to master.

Quite the opposite.

It is to have more options when your body and mind start moving in a direction you did not choose.

The importance of slowing down

Sometimes better intimacy does not require adding something.

It requires removing some noise.

Think about how most days work.

Messages.

Work.

Notifications.

News.

Screens.

Opinions.

Arguments.

Then, somehow, we expect the brain to switch immediately from alert mode to erotic mode.

Sometimes it can.

Sometimes it needs a little help.

Creating a small transition before intimacy can be surprisingly useful.

That might mean:

• Massage
• Longer caresses
• Shared breathing
• A screen-free conversation
• Touch without an immediate sexual goal
• Intimacy without pressure to perform

Products such as MYHIXEL Oil can fit naturally into this kind of ritual by encouraging slower touch, massage and shared relaxation.

Not because massage magically produces desire.

But because context matters.

The point is not to force yourself to become aroused.

It is to create conditions where connection and pleasure have more room to appear.

This is also the idea behind the art of slow pleasure: sometimes reducing urgency and expectations can make it easier to notice sensations that disappear when sex becomes another thing to rush through.

Conclusion: pleasure does not vote

So, who enjoys sex more: liberals or conservatives?

Research gives us an intriguing pattern.

Liberals tend to report more permissive sexual attitudes and greater sexual variety. Some studies find slightly higher sexual satisfaction among conservatives. But neither political identity guarantees a better sex life.

When we move from political averages to actual intimacy, other factors become much more useful:

• Communication
• Trust
• Emotional safety
• Self-esteem
• Connection
• Stress management
• Presence

So perhaps the best strategy for improving your sex life is not moving further left or right.

It is turning down the volume of the outside world long enough to pay attention to the person in front of you.

Because once the bedroom door closes, pleasure does not care who you voted for.

FAQs about sex and politics

References

• Haidt, J., & Hersh, M. A. (2001). Sexual Morality: The Cultures and Emotions of Conservatives and Liberals. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31(1), 191–221. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb02489.x
• Hatemi, P. K., Crabtree, C., & McDermott, R. (2017). The relationship between sexual preferences and political orientations: Do positions in the bedroom affect positions in the ballot box? Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 318–325. https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/the-relationship-between-sexual-preferences-and-political-orienta/
• Fangmeier, T. L., Stanley, S. M., Knopp, K., & Rhoades, G. K. (2020). Political Party Identification and Romantic Relationship Quality. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 9(3), 167–180. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34249472/
• Twyman, J. (2016). Of Sex and Politics. YouGov. https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/16383-sex-and-politics