NORC at the University of Chicago, one of the largest US independent social research organizations, has conducted a survey which exposed deep transformations and fears in American society.
First and foremost, only 1% of American respondents said that the nation's economy these days is "excellent"; 20% said it's "good," while 54% defined it as "poor," and 26% said it's "not so good."
When asked how the state of the economy will change, only 15% suggested that it will get better; 38% said that it will stay about the same; while a plurality (47%) predicted that it will get worse. Inflation still remains the major concern of those polled (65%).
Likewise, 44% of US respondents don't believe they and their family have a good chance of improving their standards of life, with just 28% saying the opposite.
Only 21% of Americans feel confident that life for their children’s generation will be better than it was for them, while 78% aren't confident about that.
When it comes to values that helped define the US national character for generations, one could notice a steep decline in comparison with a similar 1998 survey. Thus, the number of those saying that patriotism is very important has slid from 70% to 38%; only 39% believe that religion is very important, sliding from 62%; those who say that having children is important dropped from 59% to 30%. The importance of community involvement has also shrunk from 47% to 27%. At the same time, tolerance towards others, defined as very important by 80% of Americans just four years ago, has fallen to 58%.
Pollsters, cited by the US press, suggest that the combination of political division, COVID, and the lowest economic confidence in decades seems to be having a profound effect on American core values.
Meanwhile, another disturbing trend that shed some light on the changing mindset of the American people was spotted last September. A poll conducted by Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index showed that around one in three Americans would prefer a strong unelected leader to a weak elected one, and believe that US presidents should be able to oust judges over their decisions.
The pollster underscored that Republicans and Democrats supported non-democratic norms in about equal percentages. What's more, Democratic respondents (42%) were more eager than the GOP (29%) to grant presidents the power to remove judges when their decisions go against the national interests.
The September 2022 survey also found that many Americans (38%) agree that the US government should follow the will of the majority, even at the expense of the civil rights of ethnic and religious minorities.
Around a third – 34% among both Republicans and Democrats – said that the federal government should be able to prosecute journalists and news media for offensive or unpatriotic statements.
Commenting on the poll's results, some US academics alleged that there's a lot of anti-democratic sentiment in the country – a lot more than one might have expected.