How Americans Are Feeling About the U.S. as the Country Turns 250

As the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, polls show that many Americans are harboring negative feelings about the state of the country—and its future. 

Surveys conducted in recent months among Americans around the U.S. reveal that many feel less pride for their country than in the past; believe that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction; feel that the Americans dream is unattainable; and worry that American liberties are under threat. 

Democrats—whose party is shut out of control across all three branches of the federal government—and young people appear to be feeling particularly gloomy about how things are going in the U.S. and where they might be headed. But many concerns also seem to cut across age groups and party affiliations.

Here’s what to know about what Americans are saying.

Most Americans feel the U.S. is off track 

The majority of Americans think the U.S.’s peak is already in the rearview mirror, according to multiple recent polls. 

Nearly 6 in 10 respondents in a Pew Research Center survey taken in December said they believe the country’s best days are “behind us.” That sentiment prevailed on both sides of the aisle, though a greater share of Democrats agreed with it—at 64%—than Republicans—at 53%.

A poll conducted by NBC News between May 29 and June 7 similarly showed that 58% said the U.S.’s best years were in the past. 

And many opine that worse is yet to come for the country.

A poll from The Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center (NORC), conducted in April, found that 72% of those surveyed said things in the U.S. were generally headed in the “wrong direction.” 

A Reuters/Ipsos poll, meanwhile, showed that 77% of respondents surveyed in June believe political violence—which is already on the rise—will likely increase further in the next five years. On the economic front, only 22% of respondents in an April Pew poll were “very confident” that they would have enough savings for retirement, while 55% said the economy would be weaker in 2050.

Pew polling from April also showed that majorities of Americans think that the U.S. will be worse off in 2050 than it is now in a number of other ways: more politically divided (66%), less important in the world (58%), more dangerous (56%), and with a less sophisticated government (54%). 

Though Republicans and Democrats were split in how satisfied they were with how things in the U.S. are currently going, some of these concerns cut across the aisle, with similar shares of respondents from each party believing that political divides will worsen and the government will work less effectively. 

Still further in the future, the December Pew survey showed that 44% of respondents are “pessimistic” about what the U.S. will be like in 50 years, compared to just 28% who said they are “optimistic.” On this broad view, Democrats were less hopeful than Republicans: 50% of Democrats–and 63% of liberal Democrats—said they were pessimistic, while 39% of Republicans said the same. But that was still greater than the share of Republicans who expressed optimism, at just 33%.

These negative views aren’t new. AP-NORC pollsters, for instance, have been asking Americans whether they believe the country is headed in the right or wrong direction for years, and since 2017 a majority have answered that it was going in the right direction in only one of dozens of polling periods—in the spring of 2021.

American pride is at a record low, and fractured

Americans’ pride has fallen to a 25-year low as the country’s Semiquincentennial anniversary nears, according to Gallup polling.

Just 33% of U.S. adults surveyed by the organization this year say they are “extremely proud” to be American, the lowest share since Gallup first posed the question in 2001. An additional 20% say they are “very proud,” while 22% say they are “moderately proud,” 15% “only a little proud,” and 9% “not at all proud.”

That marks a notable drop even from the past couple years; in both 2024 and 2025, 41% of U.S. adults expressed extreme pride in being American. In earlier years that figure was as high as 70%—in 2003—after pride surged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. 

The NBC poll similarly found that 33% of respondents said they were “extremely proud” to be an American, with 10% saying they were “not at all proud.”

And the April AP-NORC survey also showed that Americans are feeling less pride for the country in specific areas than they were when surveyed in a 2017 poll, during Trump’s first term. Since that time, Americans’ pride in the country’s armed forces dropped from 78% to 59%; in its history from 58% to 44%; in its democracy from 42% to 28%; and in its political influence around the world from 34% to 24%. 

The polls found that the sense of pride Americans felt in the country was divided across age groups and political affiliations, however. While the share of adults aged 18-34 surveyed by Gallup this year who said they were extremely proud was just 14%, 48% for those 55 years or older said the same. Meanwhile, 70% of Republicans expressed extreme pride, compared to only 14% of Democrats.

Notably larger shares of Republicans than Democrats also expressed pride in various aspects of the U.S.—from its scientific and technological achievements to its armed forces to its “treatment of groups in society”—in the recent AP-NORC survey, while slightly more Democrats than Republicans said they were proud of the country’s popular culture.

Partisan differences also contributed to the declines AP-NORC found since 2017; for example, Democrats’ pride in the military fell from 74% in 2017 to 42% this year. 

Many Americans believe democracy and constitutional rights are threatened

A number of Americans have expressed a belief in polls this year that democracy and certain constitutional freedoms are at risk. 

The Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that 64% of Americans believe democracy is in danger of failing, with 85% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans saying so. Notably, just 37% of Republicans asked the same question in a Reuters-Ipsos survey in 2025 expressed that belief––making this year’s figure a major 74% increase.

The value that Americans place in democracy has also dropped somewhat, according to the AP-NORC poll, though not as significantly: 66% of respondents in the April survey agreed that “a democratically elected government” is “extremely important”––down from 76% in 2024 and 80% in 2021.

The AP-NORC poll additionally showed that nearly half of Americans believe that freedom the of speech is under “major threat,” while 35% believe the same of the right to vote and 28% of the freedom of religion.

Most feel the “American Dream” is out of reach 

When asked if they believed the American dream—“that if you work hard you’ll get ahead”—currently holds true, 66% of respondents in the AP-NORC poll disagreed. That figure is consistent with the findings from 2024 and 2025.

Responses were significantly split across party lines, however: 17% of Democrats surveyed this year believed the American dream holds true today, versus 57% of Republicans. Men were also more likely to believe in the truth of the American dream, at 39%, compared to women, at 29%, and older adults—those 60 years and older—were more likely to believe it than those aged 18-29, at 46% versus 22%, respectively.