Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.
With the winter holidays approaching—and with this marking the last formal edition of Survey Says for the year—it’s a natural moment to take stock. New polling offers a revealing snapshot of how Americans are closing out 2025 and what kind of mood they’re carrying into 2026.
The toplines are not encouraging.
A new survey from YouGov asked Americans to assess this past year both personally and nationally, and what emerges is a country that feels worn down, uneasy, and distinctly unconfident about what comes next.
Let’s start with the personal assessments. Just 9% of Americans said 2025 was “great” for them, and 29% called it “good.” The largest share—37%—landed in the middle, describing the year as being only “OK.” But the distribution’s darker edge was hard to ignore: 15% said the year was “bad,” and another 10% called it “terrible.”
In other words, roughly 1 in 4 Americans said their experience of 2025 was actively negative.
If Americans’ personal experience of the year is lukewarm at best, they’re even more downbeat about the country’s performance in 2025. Only 24% rated the year as “good” or “great” for the United States. Another 24% called it just “OK.” But nearly half—48%—said the year was “bad” or “terrible” for the country as a whole.
That dissatisfaction shows up clearly when Americans were asked to rate how things are going nationally on a 1-to-10 scale. Forty-seven percent placed their answer between one and four. But just 30% gave the year an seven or higher.
Other polling points in the same direction. The latest Economist/YouGov survey found that 56% of Americans said the country was “off on the wrong track,” compared with just 35% who said it was headed in the right direction.
Optimism, in other words, is in short supply.
“It’s not surprising that, overall, the results indicate the level of ambivalence and negativity that they do,” Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Daily Kos. “The country has been in deep, polarized political and social conflict, and that usually doesn’t feel like a good thing to most people.”
Reeher cautioned against reading these kinds of questions too literally, though. Assessments of “how the year was” often act as proxies for a tangle of other forces: personal psychology, financial stress, perceptions of national decline, and what social scientists call expressive bias.
“There’s so much noise in these kinds of questions,” he said. “Respondents are often signaling something else that they want others to know about them,” adding that, in this case, that could be views about the president himself or about politics more generally.
“It’s simply impossible to unwind all these threads,” Reeher said.
President Donald Trump, shown on Dec. 17.
Still, the broader gloom didn’t materialize out of thin air. Polling throughout the second half of 2025 has shown rising economic anxiety—particularly around the holidays—alongside sagging approval ratings for President Donald Trump. Those pressures appear to be shaping how people look back on the year, even if they don’t fully explain it.
At the same time, Reeher is quick to note that pessimism about the future long predates Trump.
“The polarization we are experiencing is not new or a product of Trump, and neither is the pessimism about the future,” he said. “That’s been a growing feature since the mid-2000s, with some temporary exceptions.”
Even so, the political undercurrent in the YouGov data is unmistakable. Forty-three percent of Americans describe 2025 as “one of the worst” years in American history. Some of that is almost certainly recency bias, or overemphasizing the effects of recent events. But the willingness to apply such language to the year is striking.
Notably, YouGov didn’t ask respondents why they felt this way. But the answers to questions about New Year’s resolutions offer some clues. The most common goals were modest and familiar: exercising more (25%), being happy (23%), eating healthier (22%), and saving money (21%).
More forward-looking ambitions were far less common. Just 9% said they planned to pursue a career goal in 2026, and only 12% hoped to pay down debt. Even saving money—named by 21% of Americans—comes across less as optimism than as self-protection, a reflection of how many households are still feeling financially boxed in.
Looking ahead provides little reassurance about the country’s trajectory.
While 48% of Americans believed 2026 would be good or great for them personally, only 31% said it would be great for the country. Worse, 27% predicted it would be one of the worst years in American history.
Those are dramatic numbers, but they likely reflect generalized pessimism rather than a literal comparison to historical calamities. The question asked about “one of the best years,” not whether the country would improve. Still, the pattern is clear: Far more Americans expect trouble for the country than for themselves.
It’s a familiar dynamic in polling. People often believe they’ll manage personally—even as they conclude that the broader system is failing.
So how seriously should we take these responses? Reeher urged some caution in reading too much into polls like YouGov’s.
“Those who are saying the past year has been great are probably trying to signal that they support the president,” he said. “Those who are saying that the past year has been one of the worst are probably trying to tell the surveyor that they really, really don’t like the president. The people more in the political middle are probably reacting to all the conflict and political chaos, and are either ambivalent or negative.”
That doesn’t make the data meaningless. But it does limit how much can be drawn from it.
At best, polls like this offer a reading of national mood—an emotional barometer rather than a precise diagnosis. Anyone trying to extract more than that does so at their own peril, politically or otherwise.
Any updates?
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Daily Kos has reported extensively on the cracks forming in Trump’s coalition—first among Latinos, then young voters. Now, new data from NBC News Decision Desk and SurveyMonkey confirms the trend. The largest declines in strong support since April are among Republicans overall, particularly those who identify with Trump’s MAGA movement. MAGA Republicans continue to widely approve of Trump, with 70% saying they strongly approve of him, but that represents an 8-percentage-point drop from earlier this year. Meanwhile, fewer Republicans report being part of the MAGA movement compared with earlier in 2025, highlighting early signs of fraying in Trump’s base.
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Americans remain deeply ambivalent about the rapid spread of artificial intelligence, even as they’re increasingly using it on the job. Gallup reports that the share of U.S. employees using AI at least a few times a year increased from 40% to 45% between the second and third quarters of 2025. Frequent use also increased from 19% to 23%. So, while Americans may not love AI, more of them are learning to live with it.
Vibe check
It’s easy enough to freeze up over holiday gifts, especially with people you don’t see often. Wanting to give something that signals your thought and care doesn’t always come with the clarity about what that something should be.
New polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research offers some reassurance. Nearly 9 in 10 say it’s acceptable to give cash (88%) or gift cards (87%). Even regifting or giving secondhand items—long treated as a social faux pas—now clears the bar for a solid majority: 64% say it’s fine.
Age, unsurprisingly, shapes those views. Adults ages 18 to 45 are significantly more open to secondhand gifts than those 45 and older (73% vs. 58%), reflecting the growing normalization of thrift and resale culture. The flip side is that enthusiasm for cash and gift cards declines with age, suggesting older Americans still place more weight on presentation—or at least pretense.
The poll looks beyond presents as well, examining how people are spending the holidays. Nearly half of adults (44%) plan to be in bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve—an understated way to close out a year many seem ready to move on from.
Still, signs of seasonal enthusiasm remain. About a third of Americans say they’ve worn or plan to wear a holiday sweater or accessories this month. And 30% are getting into the spirit by buying gifts for their pets—present company included. This year, we got our shelter pooch a DNA test, and I’m really excited to learn more about him.
As for Christmas Day itself, traditions vary. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they’ll watch sports, while 5% plan to head to a movie theater.
Please sound off in the comments and tell us how you’re spending the holidays. Are you keeping things low-key? Sticking to old traditions? Spoiling your pets? However you’re marking the season, we want to hear it—and happy holidays!
