National Pride at Historic Lows Leading Up to the 4th of July

According to a new Gallup poll, only 36% of Democrats say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, quantifying a dramatic decline in national pride, especially among young people.

The findings are reflective of the fact that many, if not most, Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term.

Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are Gen Z, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That’s compared with about 6 in 10 Millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — and at least 7 in 10 U.S. adults in older generations.

“Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “But even among the older generations, we see that they’re less patriotic than the ones before them, and they’ve become less patriotic over time. That’s primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.”

America’s decline in national pride has been a slow erosion, with a steady downtick in Gallup’s data since January 2001, when the question was first asked. Patriotism rose post 9/11, and during the tumultuous early years of the Iraq War, the vast majority of U.S. adults, regardless of political affiliation, said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American.

At that point, about 9 in 10 were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That remained high in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the consensus around American pride slipped in the years that followed, dropping to about 8 in 10 in 2006 and continuing a gradual decline.

The vast majority of Republicans continue to say they’re proud to be American.

Independents’ pride in their national identity hit a new low in the most recent survey, at 53%.

Democrats’ diminished pride in being American is more clearly linked to Trump’s time in office. When Trump first entered the White House, in 2017, about two-thirds of Democrats said they were proud to be American. That had fallen to 42% by 2020. Democrats’ sense of national pride rebounded when Biden took office, but, like most things, never reached pre-Trump levels.

“It’s not just a Trump story,” Jones said. “Something else is going on, and I think it’s just younger generations coming in and not being as patriotic as older people.” Personally I think that having access to all of the ways our country has failed us into relation to others makes it hard to care about a place that doesn't care about you.

A more general sense of discontent was clear on both sides of the aisle though: this year, a CNN poll found that fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats and Republicans said “proud” described the way they felt about politics in America today.

In that survey, most Americans across the political spectrum said they were “disappointed” or “frustrated” with the country’s politics.