World

Polls find majority of Americans say country is heading in wrong direction

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) – The vast majority of Americans across party lines are unhappy with the state of the US, a new set of polling finds.

In an AP-NORC survey released Wednesday, 85 percent of US adults say that things in the country are headed in the wrong direction, with just 14 percent believing things are going in the right direction. That’s a more pessimistic reading than in May, when 78 percent said things were headed the wrong way and 21 percent that things were generally moving in the right direction.

Currently, both 92 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats are dissatisfied with the direction of the country — the highest number among Democrats since President Joe Biden took office last year.

Only 20 percent of Americans describe the nation’s economy as good, with 79 percent calling it poor, according to the AP-NORC poll. This sentiment, too, is relatively bipartisan, with both 90 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats describing the economy as poor.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll also released Wednesday finds rising discontent, specifically among Democrats, in the days following the US Supreme Court ruling that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion. In that poll, 62 percent of Democrats say that things in the country are off on the wrong track, up from 49 percent the prior week. By contrast, 86 percent of Republicans say things are on the wrong track, down slightly from 94 percent a week earlier.

Americans’ views of Biden, meanwhile, remain underwater. A CNN Poll of Polls average of surveys taken in the second half of June finds that 38 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing, with 57 percent disapproving, similar to his ratings earlier in the month.

In the AP-NORC poll, 28 percent of US adults approve of Biden’s job performance on the economy — his lowest rating on the issue to date in that survey — 36 percent approve of his performance on gun policy and 53 percent approve of the way he’s handled the coronavirus pandemic.

The CNN Poll of Polls is an average of the five most recent nonpartisan, national surveys of adults on Biden’s job approval that meet CNN’s standards. When a pollster has released multiple polls in that time frame, only its most recent is included in the average

The poll of polls includes results from the Quinnipiac University poll conducted June 17-20, the CBS News/YouGov poll conducted June 22-24, the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted June 24-25, the AP-NORC poll conducted June 23-27 and the Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted June 27-28.

Related Articles

Back to top button