Last week, just before the 4th of July holiday, Gallup released their findings on how proud respondents were to be American. For 2023, the number who responded they are "extremely proud" is at just 39 percent, near the record low of last year's 38 percent. A combined 67 percent are "extremely proud" or "very proud," with 28 percent choosing that option. "Since 2018, extreme pride has consistently been... averaging 42%," the poll's write-up noted. The biggest difference in those who say they are "extremely proud" is by political affiliation. Although not quite at the record low of 2019's 22 percent, just 29 percent of Democrats answered they are "extremely proud," reflecting a downward partisan trend.
"That gap has been particularly pronounced since 2018, with more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats saying they are extremely proud. Republicans are also nearly twice as likely as independents to express the highest degree of pride," the write-up noted about such a trend. This year, 60 percent of Republicans said they were "extremely proud," while just 33 percent of Independents said so, not far off from that 29 percent of Democrats.
Results from 2019 showed a particularly polarizing year. That was the record low for Democrats, with just 22 percent saying they were "extremely proud." Independents had been at 41 percent, which was close to what was then their lowest reading, and 76 percent of Republicans said they were "extremely proud," one of the highest numbers since the poll began in 2001.
Given Democrats' low level of such strong pride in being an American, it would seem that it's not as simple as who is in office. Polarizing sentiments about then President Donald Trump would make such for such levels in 2019, but now Joe Biden is president. Republicans were also still more so "extremely proud," when then President Barack Obama was in office.
As the 2019 Gallup write-up noted:
The latest overall declines in patriotism are largely driven by Democrats, whose self-reported pride has historically been lower and has fluctuated more than Republicans'. Democrats' latest 22% extreme pride reading is the group's lowest in Gallup's 19 years of measurement, and is half of what it was several months before Donald Trump's 2016 election victory.
For their part, most Republicans have remained extremely proud of their country, and the latest 76% reading is just 10 points below the high recorded in 2003. Even when Barack Obama was in office, Republicans' extreme pride never fell below 68%.
That year's write-up went into even deeper detail in the "Bottom Line" section:
Record-low American patriotism is the latest casualty of the sharply polarized political climate in the U.S. today. For the second time in 19 years, fewer than half of U.S. adults say they are extremely proud to be Americans. The decline reflects plummeting pride among Democrats since Trump took office, even as Republican pride has edged higher.
...politics may be affecting Democrats' overall sense of pride in their country more than Republicans', given Democrats' low approval of the president. Democrats' awareness of Trump's historically low presidential approval rating across the international community may also be a factor in this latest decline in patriotism...
Absent a significant national event that might rally all Americans around the flag, given Democrats' entrenched views of the president, these historically low readings on American pride are likely to continue until Trump is no longer in office.
In response to that last point, though, a significantly low amount of Democrats still say they're "extremely proud" to be American.
Young people, who tend to be more Democratic, and young Democrats especially, are also less likely to be as proud of being American. When it comes to aggregated data from 2020-2023, 42 percent of Republicans ages 18-34 said they are "extremely proud" to be American, with 25 percent of Independents and just 12 percent of Democrats in that age group saying so. Those numbers jumped around 20 points for those 55 and older, 68 percent of Republicans in that age group saying they were "extremely proud," with 48 percent of Independents and 38 percent of Democrats in that age group expressing such pride.
The poll was conducted June 1-22, with 1,013 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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