Optimism about next 5 years hits record low in Gallup poll

The share of U.S. adults expecting to have “high-quality lives” in five years has dropped to a low of 59.2% in the latest Gallup poll.

This response to a survey conducted last year marks a decline of 9.1 percentage points from 2020, the equivalent of “an estimated 24.5 million fewer people who are optimistic about the future now versus then,” the research firm said Tuesday.

Most of this drop occurred between 2021 and 2023 under the Biden administration, but the rating fell an additional 3.5 points from 2024 to 2025, the first year of President Trump’s second term. Gallup has conducted regular polling on the question since 2008.

Souring attitudes among Hispanics and self-identified Democrats after Mr. Trump returned to office drove the latest decline in optimism, said Dan Witters, a Gallup research director.

“More generally, the sharp divergence of changes in future life ratings for Democrats compared with independents or Republicans in this latter period versus the former also suggests that the change in political administrations is a contributing factor, a mirror image of the changes that occurred between 2020 and 2021,” Mr. Witters wrote in a summary of the findings.

According to Gallup, the share of Americans who expected a better life in five years dropped from 68.3% in 2020 to 67.7% in 2021 following the inauguration of former President Joseph R. Biden.

Conducted last year, the latest survey found that 63.2% of Hispanics expected a better life in the next five years. That’s down 6 percentage points from 69.3% of the demographic in 2024. The share of self-identified Democrats who gave the same answer dropped by 7.6 points over the same period, from 64.7% to 57.1%.

The survey also found that the share of surveyed adults satisfied with their current lives dropped from 64.8% in 2024 to 62.1% in 2025. That’s the second-lowest rating on record, after just 59.5% of surveyed adults said the same thing in 2020 during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers conducted the randomized national survey with 22,125 members of the Gallup Panel throughout last year. The margin of error for the entire cohort was plus or minus 0.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.