Americans Increasingly Pessimistic About the Country’s Future

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds broad concern about where the country is headed, with majorities or near-majorities expecting the quality of life, the economy, and the system of government to worsen over the next 10 to 20 years. That marks a sharp departure from past decades, when large majorities of Americans across both parties were optimistic about the country’s future.

When respondents were asked in the poll, taken Aug. 21-24, whether they were optimistic about the quality of life in America over the next 10 to 20 years, 37% said they were optimistic, while 53% said they were pessimistic. Americans were even more pessimistic about the quality of life for the next generation, with only 29% saying they were optimistic and 59% saying they were pessimistic.

Americans aren’t just skeptical about quality of life, but also about the economy and American government. Fifty-eight percent said they were pessimistic about “our system of government” over the next 10 to 20 years, while only 31% were optimistic. On the economy, 35% were optimistic and 56% were pessimistic.

The only question on which respondents were net optimistic was about their own lives. When asked about their own quality of life, 55% were optimistic, while 35% were pessimistic.

This polling falls in line with what surveys have found over the past 20 years. Since RealClearPolitics began tracking Americans’ views on the direction of the country in early 2009, there has not been a time when more Americans thought the country was headed in the right direction than thought it was on the wrong track. In the latest RCP Average for the Direction of the Country, 59.6% said the U.S. is on the wrong track, while only 34% said we’re headed in the right direction.

This pessimism hasn’t always been a feature of the American consciousness.

Between 1978 and 2009, Gallup conducted a series of polls asking Americans whether they were optimistic about the outlook for the United States over the next 20 years. In 1978, 63% were optimistic and 29% were pessimistic. By 1991, 79% were optimistic and 19% were pessimistic, while in 2000, 78% were optimistic and 20% were pessimistic. By 2009, that optimism had begun to decline, with 63% optimistic and 34% pessimistic. Compared with those earlier polls, Americans are now roughly 40 to 50 points less optimistic about the country’s future.

The political dimension of the question has also become more pronounced over time. In the Economist/YouGov poll, 52% of Republicans were optimistic about the system of government and 60% about the quality of life, compared with just 18% and 22% of Democrats, respectively. In a December 2009 Gallup poll, when Barack Obama was president, 77% of Democrats were optimistic about the country over the next 20 years, compared with only 50% of Republicans.

In earlier polls, however, optimism remained high across both parties. In the 2000 Gallup poll, when Bill Clinton was president, 83% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans were optimistic about the future of the United States. In 1991, when George H.W. Bush was president, 85% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats were optimistic.

The contrast suggests that optimism about America’s future has become far more polarized along partisan lines, with today’s partisan gap reaching roughly 34 to 38 points, compared with just 8 to 9 points in the 1991 and 2000 Gallup polls.

The comparison shows that Americans’ pessimism today is not simply a permanent feature of the country’s politics. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Democrats and Republicans alike were overwhelmingly optimistic about America’s future, even when the opposing party controlled the White House.

Today, that broad confidence has largely disappeared. Americans remain relatively optimistic about their own lives, but when asked about the country, its government, its economy or the next generation, pessimism has become the dominant view.