Gallup finds 54% of U.S. adults drink alcohol, tying a record low

A Gallup poll released Thursday found that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcohol, matching last year’s figure and tying the lowest level Gallup has recorded since it began asking the question in 1939.

The new reading continues a sharp decline over the past three years. Gallup said self-reported drinking fell from 62% in 2023 to 58% in 2024 and then to 54% in 2025, where it remained this year. The survey was conducted July 1 through July 19 among 1,200 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The poll also found that Americans have grown more likely to see even moderate alcohol use as harmful. Asked whether drinking one or two alcoholic beverages a day is good for health, makes no difference or is bad for health, 51% said it is bad for health. That is close to last year’s 53%, which was a record high in Gallup’s trend. Only 6% now say moderate drinking is good for health, while 40% say it makes no difference. When Gallup first asked the question in 2001, 27% said moderate drinking was bad for health, 22% said it was good for health and 46% said it made no difference.

Awareness of research on alcohol’s health effects also rose. Gallup found that 86% of Americans said they had heard at least something about recent studies on the long-term effects of drinking, up from 79% in 2024. A combined 54% said they had heard either a great deal or a fair amount, compared with 49% two years earlier.

Among people who drink, fewer now say they sometimes consume more alcohol than they think they should. That figure fell to 13%, a new low in Gallup’s data. The poll said reports of overdrinking were routinely above 20% before 2000 and reached 35% in 1989. In the current survey, 87% of drinkers said they do not sometimes drink too much.

Gallup’s data suggest that Americans who still drink are, on average, consuming less than in earlier years. Drinkers reported an average of 3.2 drinks in the previous seven days, up slightly from 2.8 last year but below the 3.9 average recorded across the five surveys before that. The median was one drink. Thirty-nine percent of drinkers said they had consumed no alcohol in the previous week, 49% said they had one to seven drinks, 7% reported eight to 19 drinks and 3% said they had 20 or more.

The decline in drinking since 2023 appeared across most major demographic groups, according to Gallup, including men, women, White adults, non-White adults and all age groups. The organization said none of those groups posted a statistically significant change from last year. Current drinking levels were 56% among men and 53% among women. By age, 50% of adults ages 18 to 34 said they drink, compared with 58% of those ages 35 to 54 and 55% of those 55 and older.

Political and income differences remained visible in the results. Gallup said drinking has dropped sharply since 2023 among Republicans and independents, though not among Democrats. In the current survey, 50% of Democrats, 53% of independents and 63% of Republicans said they drink alcohol. Drinking was also more common in higher-income households, with 43% of adults earning under $50,000 saying they drink, compared with 57% of those in households earning $50,000 to $100,000 and 66% of those earning $100,000 or more.

For the first time, Gallup asked about nonalcoholic alternatives such as alcohol-free beer, wine and spirits. Seventeen percent of Americans said they had consumed one of those beverages instead of an alcoholic drink at some point in the past year, while 82% said they had not. Among those who had used nonalcoholic alternatives, 33% said they now drink more of them than they used to, 28% said they drink less and 34% said their use is about the same. Gallup noted that use of those alternatives remains limited overall.

Beer remained the most commonly preferred type of alcohol, but only by a narrow margin. Among drinkers, 36% said beer is the type they drink most often, 32% chose liquor and 30% chose wine. Gallup said those results are broadly in line with recent years, but over a longer period preferences have shifted. Since 2016, preference for liquor has risen by 12 percentage points, while beer has fallen by seven points. Wine has stayed near 30%.

The poll found large gender differences in beverage choice. Among male drinkers, 56% said they most often drink beer, compared with 16% of female drinkers. Women were much more likely than men to prefer wine, 45% to 15%, and were also more likely to choose liquor, 37% to 26%. Age differences were less pronounced, though adults 55 and older were more likely to prefer wine, while younger and middle-aged adults leaned more toward liquor.

Gallup’s survey included interviews by landline and cellphone in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including interviews in Spanish for primarily Spanish-speaking respondents. For the 701 respondents who said they drink alcohol, the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.