American Pride hits new low Gallup poll

[Platapus]

https://news.gallup.com/poll/259841/...al-system.aspx

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Americans prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup's first measurement in 2001. While 70% of U.S. adults overall say they are proud to be Americans, this includes fewer than half (45%) who are "extremely" proud, marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level. Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S.


These findings are explored further with new measurements of the public's pride in eight aspects of U.S. government and society. American scientific achievements, military and culture/arts engender the most pride, while the U.S. political system and health and welfare system garner the least.
Decreasing Percentage in U.S. Are Extremely Proud to Be American

U.S. adults' extreme pride in being American has been steadily weakening in recent years, and the current reading, from a June 3-16 Gallup poll, marks the lowest point to date. However, the latest two-percentage-point decline from last year's 47% is not a statistically significant change.
The highest readings on the measure, 69% and 70%, were between 2002 and 2004, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the American public expressed high levels of patriotism and rallied around the U.S. government. Yet, since the start of George W. Bush's second presidential term in 2005, fewer than 60% of Americans have expressed extreme pride in being American.

The rest of the article breaks down these numbers in all sorts of ways.


Personally, I find this graphic to be confusing. The author does not amply define the differences between the two lines. I am assuming that the Darker Green line is the cumulative total of both the Extremely Proud numbers and the Very Proud numbers. I am further assuming that there was no "Proud" option only Very Proud and Extremely Proud.

Bottom Line

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.

While neither party group feels proud of the U.S. political system, 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. So too could be Gallup data from earlier this year, which found that just 31% of Americans (including 2% of Democrats) think foreign leaders have respect for Trump.

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.

The good news is that despite a slump in overall pride, the country offers many achievements that are a source of pride for Americans -- Democrats and Republicans alike.

I do have to add that as a professional who deals with this sort of data, I am not comfortable with ill-defined and subjective measurands such as "Extremely Proud", "Very Proud", and "Proud".

What one person may consider being "Very Proud" another similar person may consider "Extremely Proud" and another similar person may consider "Proud".

I, myself, tend not to think in terms of superlatives. Others only deal with superlatives. That makes the collection and more importantly the analysis of subjective data much more difficult.

But then, the Gallup people have been doing this for a few years and I am sure they have smart people (Extremely Smart or Very Smart?) working on this.

[Sailor Steve]

So much also depends on exactly what you're proud of.

"I'm proud of my country" can mean "My country, right or wrong".
It can mean "I love my country, but I'm not so proud of what's going on right now."

I live in a predominantly Conservative State. When Clinton was in office I saw a bumper sticker that said "I love my country, but I don't like the Government. Then, when Bush took over those stickers all disappeared, and it was "If you don't like your government you're anti-American.

Every nation has mood swings, and I've always said it is my belief that the real problem is Party mentality ("I'm right and you're stupid"). The level of pride depends altogether too much upon whether "Our Guys" are in office.

[em2nought]

There they go believing in polls again.

[vienna]

Hey, even Trump has his own in-house pollsters...


...of course, with Trump, if his pollsters return results he doesn't agree with or like, instead of trying to make positive changes to turn around the in-house poll results, he simply fires the pollsters and hire new pollsters more attuned to sycophancy...


...meanwhile, in the real world, his numbers just keep crumbling away and the American voters are moving further away from Trump and the GOP...








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