A growing share of Americans believe the country has gone too far in accepting different cultures, gender identities and sexual orientations, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with the shift driven by a hardening of attitudes since last summer and exposing deep divides by party, gender and ideology.

In the survey, 47% of Americans said society has gone too far in accepting these differences, up from 41% in a comparable CNN poll conducted in late August and early September of 2025. Over the same period, the share saying society has not gone far enough slipped from 36% to 33%, and the portion describing the current level of acceptance as "about right" fell from 24% to 19%.

The question asked respondents to weigh in on what the survey described as a years-long political debate over American society's acceptance of different cultures, gender identities, sexual orientations and other backgrounds. The order of the first two response options was rotated to guard against bias.

The roughly six-point rise in the "gone too far" camp came largely at the expense of the middle ground, with the "about right" share dropping five points and now representing fewer than one in five Americans.

The headline number masks sharp internal divisions. Partisanship was the single biggest fault line: 78% of Republicans said society had gone too far, compared with just 18% of Democrats, a 60 point gap. Among Democrats, a clear majority, 64%, said the country had not gone far enough. Independents landed close to the national figure, with 47% saying society had gone too far. The ideological split was nearly as wide, with 73% of conservatives saying acceptance had gone too far versus 15% of liberals, 70% of whom said it hadn't gone far enough.

Men and women also diverged. A 53% majority of men said society had gone too far, against 42% of women, while women were far more likely to say the country had not gone far enough (40% versus 26% of men). Views also varied by race, with 52% of white respondents saying society had gone too far compared with 40% of people of color, 35% of Black Americans and 41% of Hispanic respondents.

Age and education added further texture. Older adults were more likely to say acceptance had gone too far, 54% of those aged 50 to 64 and 48% of those 65 and older, versus 38% of adults under 30. Respondents without a college degree were more likely than college graduates to say society had gone too far, 52% to 40%.

The findings sit alongside a separate question in the same poll suggesting Americans remain resistant to rolling back social change. Asked whether the country would be better or worse off if men and women returned to the traditional family, workplace and societal roles of the 1950s, 45% said worse, 35% said better and 20% said it would make no difference. By comparison, a 1997 Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey found a closer split, with 38% saying such a return would be better and 34% saying it would be worse, an indication that resistance to mid-century gender norms has grown over the decades even as wariness about the pace of cultural acceptance has risen.

Taken together, the results point to a complicated and at times contradictory public mood: a plurality of Americans now say cultural acceptance has stretched too far, even as most reject the idea of returning to the gender roles of the past.

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from May 7 to May 31, 2026, among a random national sample of 2,480 adults reached by mail, web and telephone. The survey was funded jointly by CNN and KFF. Results for the full sample carry a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points; subgroups carry larger margins of error.