American’s Personal Satisfaction Near 40-Year High, But Satisfaction With Direction of the Country Near 40-Year Low: Gallup Poll
A recent Gallup poll found near historic highs and lows for how Americans are feeling about their personal lives versus the overall direction of the country – a discussion that went viral this week as the news cycle has been particularly glum.
With record-high inflation, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, fears of a war between Russia and Ukraine, the tucker’s anti-vaccine mandate protest in Canada, and the ongoing corruption scandals surrounding former President Donald Trump and, on Fox News, Hillary Clinton and the Durham investigation it is understandable Americans are concerned.
Gallup found that “Americans’ satisfaction with the direction of the country has fallen to 17%, the lowest in a year.” At the height of the pandemic in 2020, that figure fell to 11% and it fell to 10% during the 2008 financial crisis. Other than those two major events, 17% marks a low point for American satisfaction with the direction of the country dating back to the early 1980s.
On the flip side, Americans are feeling pretty good about their personal lives.
“Americans’ satisfaction with their own lives has ticked up to 85%, just five points shy of the 2020 record-high point” of 90%, Gallup explains.
The 90% high personal satisfaction rate was in January 2020, before the pandemic set in. Gallup’s summary of the poll explains that even with high personal satisfaction, satisfaction with the direction of the country remained relatively low.
“Even as satisfaction with the way things were going in the nation in January 2020 was a relatively high 41%, a 58% majority of Americans were dissatisfied, including 33% who were very dissatisfied,” writes Gallups’ Megan Brenan.
While the poll came out almost two weeks ago, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson revived a discussion Wednesday on its findings. Thompson noted that the poll’s spectacular disparity between personal satisfaction and satisfaction with the direction of the country speaks volumes about our current political and media environment.
Thompson writes that the poll shows, “ppl [people] are resilient, but judgey: so the personal satisfaction line is straight but the nat’l satisfaction line is jagged.”
He also notes that “news is a VR where everything is always bad, even when life is okay.”
4. for the twitter doomers: maybe ~everybody’s actually doing terribly all the time, but it’s weird to have a therapy sesh with a pollster, so the straight personal-satisfaction line is largely a figment of toxic stoicism and the jagged line is the truer expression of happiness😢
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) February 16, 2022
Pollster Frank Luntz weighed in on the poll as well noting that it mirrors “A similar phenomenon as Congress’ job approval always being abysmal, but people’s approval of their own Congressional rep being sky-high.”
A similar phenomenon as Congress’ job approval always being abysmal, but people’s approval of their own Congressional rep being sky-high. https://t.co/oc8s6Tj8t0
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) February 16, 2022
Thompson makes the point, however, that the personal satisfaction numbers may not be all that accurate:
dummy’s razor: of course everybody is going to say they’re fine to a stranger on the phone, and national evaluations are just a proxy for partisanship + misery index
6. Yes!
“I’m doin’ okay, but the country is a mess” seems like an important backdrop to thermostatic public opinion theory, since voters want bold change that actually changes as little as possible.https://t.co/aOhcHbAm26
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) February 16, 2022
