Just 63 Percent Of Americans Are Proud Of Their Country, According To New Poll, The Lowest Level In Decades
Only 63 percent of Americans are proud of their country, the lowest level of national pride since such numbers have been tracked, according to a new Gallup survey.
An ongoing public health crisis that has claimed more than 100,000 lives, a deepening racial divide made evident by massive protests, and an intractable economic crisis have all taken their toll on Americans’ pride in their country. Of the adults polled, only 63 percent said they were proud of their country. Specifically, 42 percent of Americans are “extremely” proud to be American, and 21 percent are “very” proud.
By comparison, the highest percentage of Americans proud of their country ever recorded in the two decades Gallup has been conducting such polls was in 2003, when 92 percent of those surveyed said they were proud to be American.
In looking at the reverse side of the equation, 15 percent of Americans say they are “moderately proud,” 12 percent “only a little proud,” and 9 percent “not at all proud.”
As is often the case with such polls, the differences are even more stark when analyzed along racial, ethnic and gender lines.
For example, 49 percent of white poll respondents said they were “extremely proud” to be an American while only 24 percent of nonwhites said the same.
Gallup writer Megan Brenan posted that some of the decline can be attributed to the George Floyd protests.
“Racially charged incidents involving police and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement have increasingly contributed to a national discussion about the challenges blacks face in society and likely also factor into the decrease in American pride,” she said.
Among men, 50 percent said they were “extremely proud” to be an American while only 34 percent of women said the same.
And along political lines, the differences between how the two sides view the situation is equally apparent. Among Republicans, 67 percent answered that they were extremely proud to be American, while 24 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Independents said the same thing.
In fact, among Republicans, national pride has dropped over the past couple of years. In 2016, the last full year in which Barack Obama was in office, 68 percent of Republicans answered that they were extremely proud to be American. That number reached 76 percent in 2019, during the middle of Donald Trump’s first term, and then fell to 67 percent this year.
Among Democrats, that number dropped precipitously during the same time period. In 2016, 45 percent said they were extremely proud to be American. This was followed by a low of 22 percent in 2019 only to tick back up to 24 percent this year.
With those changes in Republicans’ and Democrats’ pride in their country comes a narrowing of the gap between the two views. In 2019, there was a 54-point gap between the two percentages, while that number has since narrowed to 43-point gap.
