WASHINGTON — With the United States gearing up for elaborate festivities marking its 250th birthday, a recent national survey reveals Americans are growing less convinced their nation stands apart from others worldwide.
Research from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows widespread concern about the future of American democratic institutions, especially among younger generations. This sentiment creates a stark backdrop as cities and towns across the nation plan commemorative events for the milestone anniversary.
The polling data shows just one in four Americans believes the United States surpasses all other nations globally, while 44% view it as among the world’s top countries alongside others. Roughly 30% now say other nations outperform the U.S., marking a significant jump from the 19% who held this view in a June 2016 AP-NORC survey.
The research reveals Americans continue to disagree on whether diversity defines the nation’s character, while consensus on other foundational elements appears to be weakening. Fewer citizens now consider democratically elected leadership as “extremely” or “very” crucial to America’s national identity compared to recent years. Currently, about two-thirds of adults view democratic governance as highly significant to the country’s identity, dropping from 80% recorded in 2021.
“It’s not that the democracy part is not working,” said Derricka Wall, 24, of Chickasaw, Alabama. “It’s the people that are actually being put in office that is the problem.”
Wall contends that elected officials have undermined America’s governmental framework, originally created to guarantee representation and prevent governmental overreach.
She described America as “not what it used to be. I feel like our founding fathers would be kind of disappointed with how it is now.”
The survey found younger Americans express significantly less belief in U.S. superiority compared to older citizens.
Among adults under 30, approximately 44% believe other countries surpass the United States, contrasting with 22% of those aged 60 and above who share this view.
Additionally, fewer young people consider democracy central to American identity. Only half of Americans under 30 hold this belief, compared with 81% of those 60 and older.
Wall explained that the founders who created the system of balanced governmental branches believed they were establishing protections against concentrated power. However, she thinks they couldn’t anticipate how quickly these safeguards would fail when officials stopped upholding them.
“I feel like they would actually roll out of their graves,” she said. “I feel they would be very disappointed in us.”
Dissatisfaction with political effectiveness spans beyond younger demographics. Kent Stage, 62 and a retired senior enlisted man in the Army, is a registered Republican in Indiana. He doubts the existing political framework can solve national challenges. He advocates for congressional term limits and increased working-class representation in government.
“I’ll trust the ambulance-chasing lawyer and a shady used car salesman before I trust the politician,” he said.
Stage, who is also a former Marine, thinks elected officials prioritize personal and family interests “while mine and yours still got to hit the old grindstone.”
The polling also reveals extensive doubt about America’s promise of opportunity. Approximately half of adults, 51%, believe the American Dream — the concept that hard work leads to advancement — was once valid but no longer applies. About one-third maintain it “still holds true” while 15% say it was never accurate.
Jack Hermanson, a 27-year-old software developer in Denver, said his faith in the American Dream shifted after watching his engineer husband’s job search difficulties. “That really shattered my impression that if you work hard, you get what you deserve,” Hermanson said.
Just 22% of Americans under 30 believe the American Dream remains valid, compared with 46% of Americans ages 60 and older.
Angela Toombs, 31, works at a senior living facility in Atlanta where her clients describe how easily they purchased homes while working entry-level positions in their twenties and express disbelief about the challenges facing Toombs’ generation. Toombs recently abandoned her apartment to rent a room for financial savings.
Doubt about the American Dream is more common among Democrats and independents than Republicans. Most Republicans, 57%, maintain the American Dream remains achievable, compared with about one-quarter of independents and 17% of Democrats.
Republicans also show much higher rates of viewing the U.S. as exceptional. About half of Republicans consider the U.S. superior to all other nations, compared with only 7% of Democrats.
Quintin Sharpe, 28, lives in a resort town on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. A financial planner who is Republican, he said the American Dream stays within reach and he takes pride in the country. “It’s been a great experiment.”
“The opportunity is there for those who want to work for it,” he said. Sharpe considers the country “a meritocracy, and the best ideas, the best work ethic, those with the best succeed regardless of race, skin color, any of those factors.”
He and his wife plan to mark the country’s 250th anniversary by watching fireworks over the lake.
Slightly more than half of adults — 56% — consider shared American culture and values as “extremely” or “very” significant to national identity, declining from 65% in 2017. Younger Americans show less likelihood than older ones to view unified values as important to U.S. identity.
However, Americans stay deeply split on the importance of embracing diverse viewpoints: About half of adults, 51%, consider the capacity for people to arrive from other nations to flee violence or seek economic opportunities as “extremely” or “very” important to American identity, while 55% say this about blending cultures and values from worldwide.
Only about 40% of Republicans view the mixing of global cultures and values as fundamental to national identity, compared with 76% of Democrats.
Rose Nunez, 70, of San Antonio, was a small business owner but now is a caregiver for family members. Nunez, who tends to vote for Democrats, said there is an unease and tension that are just beneath the surface, especially focused on Hispanics. She said some people have started carrying their papers showing their immigration status in case they are challenged.
“It is hard to celebrate when the feelings towards immigrants and communities of color are so strong,” she said of the upcoming America 250 celebrations.
She said even citizens are questioned now. If it gets to a point where being naturalized is challenged, “guess what, my mom would be leaving. She’s been living in this country since she was maybe four years old. She’s 93.”
The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
