Satisfaction with the way the U.S. functions is at its lowest level since Gallup began the assessment two decades ago.
Measured by seven key aspects, satisfaction among Americans plummeted to 39% at the start of 2021.
That compares with 53% one year ago: the highest in more than a decade.
One year ago, Trump was president, the economy was considered a roaring success, and the Covid-19 pandemic had not yet taken its full hold.
The following is from Gallup. Read more here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' satisfaction with seven broad aspects of the way the country functions is collectively at its lowest in two decades of Gallup measurement. This includes satisfaction with the overall quality of life in the U.S., assessments of government, corporate and religious influence, and perceptions of the economic and moral climates.
The average percentage satisfied with these seven dimensions has plunged to 39% at the start of 2021. That compares with 53% a year ago, the highest average in more than a decade amid strong economic confidence and before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S.
These gallup polls are so telling. From the most admired man in America, taken after the election, which was Donald Trump, to this one where people have basically lost faith in our country and the misery index is so high. The mainstream media can keep repeating their lies, but these polls, if true, tell a different story..
You do realize that the "plummeting" happened while Trump was President, right?
It’s called the China virus.
You do realize it is mainly the Democrat voters that caused the numbers to plummet, right?
Just as it was the Democrat voters that caused the numbers to increase while Trump was President.
The only item in the poll that both sides agree on is moral and ethical climate, 17% Republican and 16% Democrat, everyone, it seems, realizes there are no ethics left in gov't.
The only item Democrat voters are a higher % than Republican is "Size and Power of Government" at almost 2 - 1 difference.
But I'm sure you read the Gallup article and know this already.
The post to which I was replying seemed to say that the plummeting of the quality of life poll numbers was because Trump lost the election and was replaced by Biden. My point was simply that the plummeting of those numbers started while Trump was still President. Now, you can blame it on any number of things if you’d like, but it is impossible to blame Trump’s election loss for all of it since the downward trend was in full swing long before the election.
And it isn’t true that “it is mainly the Democrat voters that caused the numbers to plummet”, at least not in the 8 categories for which data for 2020 and 2021 is broken out by party (the .pdf file only provides party affiliation for 2021 data and so can’t be used to look at any trend). It’s an admittedly crude measure, but the average Republican score dropped 15 points while the average Democratic score dropped 7.5 points between 2020 and 2021.
you realize there was a pandemic perpatrated right ? Now biden can do like Obama blame trump whine for 4 years as the ecomony stagnates his EOS have already started the process
The plummet also occurred during the pandemic - you don’t Think that played a major part in this response?
It happened due to one thing -- the unleashing of the Wuhan Virus by the Chinese bio-terrorists. What did our President Trump have to do with that atrocity? Nothing.
“No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot” -Mark Twain
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson
This is only the beginning! The Buffoon in chief is off to a rocky start. Wait till the taxes on energy kick in, and we're swamped with refugees!
Appreciate your work Sharyl
Not a conspiracy theorist, but I do find it quite interesting that Trump was considered unbeatable this time last year. Then came the pandemic. Then came the bizarre turn of Joe Biden's fate and "his" choice of VP. Then, just before the election, the media and Tech Titans suppressed the credible evidence of Hunter Biden's pay-for-play scheme thereby not allowing voters to make up their own minds about it. Then we had the voting machine software controversy that was never fully investigated, ending with something akin to the Reichstag Fire on January 6th wherein Antifa members were known to be present.. Why do I compare it to Reichstag fire? Read the timeline of events that followed it from February 27, 1933 onward leading to the banning of all other parties in Germany on July 14, 1933. The rest, as they say, is history, If I wanted to write a political thriller, there is so much fodder for a plot, but it would be panned as being too fantastical. So as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction.
Excellent points.
Only those with severe TDS are unable to see what is going on in our country. If the tables were turned they would be screaming bloody murder. The Left’s only way to win is to lie, cheat and steal. Godlessness is a scary thing. They set the stage all the time thinking they are fooling everyone but they are the fools. Shameful, disgraceful. Fortunately God is in control and He works all things for the good of those who love Him. No matter what happens those who believe in Jesus are in good hands and have hope everlasting!
I am not a conspiracy theorist either so allow me to provide rational alternative explanations for all of these supposedly “unexplainable” things. The claim that Trump “was considered unbeatable this time last year” is not supported by the polling data (I understand that the polls did underestimate Trump’s strength, but that’s the only source that I know upon which to base a claim that Trump was unbeatable). A year ago, Biden led Trump by 5.4 points (he ended up winning by 4.5 points). And while it’s true that Biden did very poorly in the initial primaries, his rise from the dead is really not all that “bizarre”. It seems to me that many voters (primarily Black voters) realized that Biden was the person with the best chance to beat Trump and coalesced around his candidacy. That was enough to get his campaign moving on Super Tuesday, and he never looked back. I assume that the quotation marks around “his” selection is intended to indicate that Biden’s choice wasn’t really his own. I have no idea if that is true or not, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a Presidential candidate picked someone using input from other sources. I see nothing particularly sinister or conspiratorial about it. Is this intended to show some shadowy cabal manipulating Biden? If so, where’s the evidence? It is true that there hasn’t been much coverage of the supposed “Hunter Biden's pay-for-play scheme”. There are three possible reasons for this: (1) the story is still being investigated, or (2) it is being suppressed by the MSM, or (3) there’s no story there. Take your pick – I don’t care. Hunter Biden isn’t President. And the last time that I checked, Joe Biden hadn’t appointed any relatives to high-level positions. The only “voting machine software controversy” that I’m aware of is the made-up story about Dominion and Smartmatic. What’s truly amazing about this particular story is that it persists even when Georgia did a complete hand recount of the votes and found the results accurate (Arizona did a partial recount with the same result). I’m not sure what else could be done to prove that the machines didn’t change votes. Even Newsmax and Fox have read disclaimers on-air admitting that they had no evidence to support the claim of malfunctioning voting machines.
There probably were some “Antifa” sympathizers in the Capitol mob. But, so far, precious few have been identified whereas hundreds of Trump supporters are known to have been there as well as many far-right organizations such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who participated in and planned the riot. So unless those proportions change, it seems almost like wishful thinking to claim that Antifa had much to do with the riot.
The reference to the Reichstag fire seems misguided to me. That was used as a pretext by the Nazis to grab power. Yet at the time of the riot, it was the Democrats who were arguing for normal order and for respecting the election results while it was the Republicans who were arguing for the House to overturn the results. So if any party was guilty of a power grab, it was the Republicans.
Thank you for your opinion. And I must respectfully disagree with your comment re the election results. Why would the Democrats contest it? They spent four years contesting the results of the 2016 election. Thin evidence of interference (at best) was argued and investigated over and over again. Yet, the concerns regarding the voting machine software were swept away. Please do not for a minute expect anyone to agree that had these concerns about voter fraud been over an election the Republicans won, the Democrats would not be screaming bloody murder with the same set of facts before them. As they should. I wonder if you can agree that we are no longer on a slippery slope. We are at the bottom of the abyss. And it's time to stop assigning blame and just save the country from itself.
And one more thing...why is it Kosher for the Dems to challenge the Dominion Software, but not the Republicans?
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/05/the-return-of-marc-elias-the-lawyer-implicated-in-the-clinton-dossier-scandal-is-back-in-the-news/
Since you were respectful in your rebuttal, I will show the same courtesy and stick to the facts as I understand them. First of all, the claim that Democrats “spent four years contesting the results of the 2016 election” is not the way that I remember it at all. The only thing that I remember is that the Clinton campaign piggybacked on the Wisconsin recount that the Stein campaign actually paid for. I also remember Democrats grousing that Comey had cost Clinton the election with his last-minute resuscitation of the e-mail investigation (that argument might not be true, but it isn’t outlandish given that late-deciding voters broke heavily for Trump). But I truly don’t remember any wide-scale investigation of, or claims of, voter fraud. Well, I guess that’s not completely true because Trump claimed that 3M illegals voted in California and even established a voter fraud commission to look into it. So even when the he won the election, Trump wasn’t satisfied. What exactly are you claiming as evidence that the Democrats continued to bring up voter fraud in the 2016 election? And I take issue with your claim that “the concerns regarding the voting machine software were swept away”. It was a pretty preposterous story to begin with (that Dominion was founded by two friends of Hugo Chavez and had developed software to rig elections in Venezuela and then used that software to rig this election), but election officials took it seriously enough to do at least one complete and one partial recount that established that the machine voting totals were correct. What more would you want them to do? In what way were the concerns “swept away”?
You assert that Democrats would be up in arms if the same concerns over voter fraud existed and Trump had won. Perhaps you are right. Since it didn’t happen, it’s an unknowable thing. All you can do is look at recent history as a guide. I assert that Dems did not question the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 win (they certainly protested that Trump had won but that was mostly about the Electoral College and not about the election itself). And look at 2000 when Gore had a more than legitimate gripe about the way that Florida had run its election and yet conceded graciously when the Supreme Court ruled as it did. By contrast, Trump has yet to concede despite record numbers of court losses. So the history isn’t favorable to the idea that Dems would have reacted as loudly as Republicans have now.
I also don’t agree that we are not on a slippery slope. But the slippery slope that I see has nothing to do with political philosophy. It is a battle between logic (facts) and emotion (feelings). And emotion is winning. Both sides shy away from fact-based arguments, but it’s clear to me that it is simply a false equivalency to equate Dems and Reps on that issue. Where do almost all of the conspiracy theories (pizzagate, QAnon, false flag shootings, Jade Helm, birtherism, Seth Rich, Vince Foster, Ron Brown, etc.) come from? It isn’t Democrats. These conspiracy theories are laughable on their face yet significant numbers of Reps believe them.
I wish that we were at the bottom since that would mean that the only way is up. But, sadly, I don’t see that as being the case, and my #1 example is the story of election fraud. Reps continue to argue that the election was fraudulent armed only with their hurt feelings because Trump lost. This election has been investigated six ways from Sunday, and it’s still not enough. Trump has lost 60-odd court cases, and it’s still not enough. To my knowledge not a single piece of “evidence” has been presented that has not legitimately been explained away, and it’s still not enough. We have been promised “kraken-level” evidence any number of times but when the time arrives, the evidence goes “poof”. And it’s still not enough. And no fraud believer has provided anything approaching a reasonable explanation for how such a massive fraud could have been pulled off, involving as it would have had to multiple poll workers and election officials in multiple states. All without leaving any evidence. But none of these logical arguments makes a dent. Because the arguments of the other side are based on emotion. It’s one thing to believe that the election was stolen. No one can prove that it wasn’t. But it’s entirely another thing to believe that evidence has been produced to back up that claim. That’s simply being delusional. Yet here we are.
There’s a chance to at least agree to disagree when arguments are based on facts. There is simply no way to come together at all when one side disproportionately uses almost all of its energy on emotional arguments. So until both sides (but especially Reps) start to use facts in their arguments and decisions, we haven’t hit bottom.