Memorial Day started life as Decoration Day, a post–Civil War ritual where neighbors gathered to lay flowers on the graves of soldiers. Organized by communities, run by communities, mourned by communities. In its origin it's a civic holiday as much as a military one. So as the parades roll out this weekend, I went looking for what the polling says about that civic part — the part that doesn't get a flyover.
The picture is grim. Faith in democracy is at a generational low. Americans talk to their neighbors half as often as they did a decade ago. Trust in government, Congress, and most institutions is collapsing across party lines. And yet, buried in the same month's data, is a striking and hopeful bipartisan finding — and it's about service itself.
What We Still Agree On
A new More in Common survey for the American Service Project found that voluntary national service draws support from more than 8 in 10 Democrats and Republicans alike, with roughly 4 in 10 in each party strongly supporting it. In the current polling environment, where Democrats and Republicans can barely agree that the sky is blue, this stands out.
It gets more interesting. Americans prefer the "earn-your-way" model of national service over passive financial assistance like universal basic income by a 7-to-1 margin, and that preference holds consistently across party lines.
On a weekend dedicated to honoring service, the polling says service is one of the very few things we still believe in together. Trust in the institutions that organize it has collapsed. Trust in the political class that fights over it is at rock-bottom. What endures is belief in the act itself.
The Neighborhood Has Gone Quiet
The reason that national service finding matters is the data sitting next to it. Because while we still believe in the idea of civic contribution, the daily practice of it has been collapsing for a decade.
Ipsos's American Neighbor Survey (n=5,357) lays out the decline in numbers that are hard to look away from. Only 40% of Americans now talk to their neighbors at least a few times a week, down from 59% in 2012. That's a 19-point collapse in a decade.
The generational split is worse. 56% of seniors still chat with neighbors several times a week. Among young adults, it's just 25%, down from 51% in 2012. More than half of that habit has evaporated in a single generation.
65% of Americans now say being a good neighbor means not getting too involved in others' personal affairs. Only 33% define it as actively offering help.
The definition of neighborliness itself has flipped. 65% now define being a good neighbor as not getting too involved in others' affairs. Only 33% say it means actively offering help unprompted. Among young adults, 70% prefer the hands-off view.
Ipsos's companion data on the same survey shows political intolerance moving into the space neighborliness used to occupy. 74% of liberals say they'd be uncomfortable living next to an ardent Trump supporter. 52% of conservatives say the same about a strong Trump opponent. The neighborhood used to be the place where Americans bumped up against people who disagreed with them. It's increasingly the place where they don't have to.
There's a class story underneath this too. College graduates are 12 points more likely than non-college Americans to have collaborated with neighbors on a community problem. The Americans with the least individual political voice are also the least likely to be solving problems together at the local level. It's a double disadvantage.
A Country That Has Stopped Trusting Itself
Zoom out from the neighborhood and the institutional picture gets worse, and it gets worse across every line you can draw through the electorate.
Young Americans are out. Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics youth poll (n=2,018, ages 18–29) finds 50% of 18- to 29-year-olds say people like them have no real say in government, up 15 points since 2017. Only 26% feel hopeful about the future of the country, down from 55% in 2021. The cross-partisan nature of the disillusionment is the real signal: 53% of Democrats, 52% of Independents, and 48% of Republicans in this cohort all say they have no real say. The crisis is structural, and Democrats, Independents, and Republicans share the diagnosis.
A separate Ipsos survey of young Americans lands in the same place from a different direction: trust in the federal government among 18–29 year-olds is at 15%. Only 12% say they feel motivated and ready to participate. 13% say the country is on the right track.
Everyone else is heading the same way. Echelon Insights finds voters say trust in government and institutions is getting worse from one generation to the next, by a 61-point margin — the most pessimistic rating of any institution they tested. Cygnal (n=1,500) finds Congress is the least-trusted institution in their full battery: 42% of voters express zero trust in Congress, with just 7% expressing high trust.
Second-best on that Cygnal list: the U.S. military, at 58% high trust, behind only small businesses. The institution Memorial Day exists to honor remains one of the very few that Americans on both sides of the partisan divide still take seriously.
This Week's Shorter Stories
🪖 Americans are increasingly skeptical of how military service is being deployed. Institute for Global Affairs (n=1,000) finds 55% say President Trump uses the military too much; only 4% say he should use it more. 54% say his policies have made the world less safe. The Republican number on military restraint, just 17%, is the inverse of where the party sat a year ago. The instinct to honor service runs alongside a growing instinct to be more careful about what we ask service members to do.
⚖️ The same poll documents a partisan reversal on a foundational civic question. Just 32% of Republicans now say the president should seek congressional approval before military action, down 47 points since the final year of the Biden administration. Incredibly we seem to have arrived at a point where constitutional war-power norms appear to be a function of who holds the presidency, not durable public conviction.
💰 Cross-partisan agreement on what Washington is broken by. That same Cygnal poll finds 71% of voters are extremely or very concerned about billionaire political influence, including 88% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 55% of Republicans. Even 52% of Cygnal's MAGA Core segment shares the concern. The populist read on Washington is now bipartisan baseline.
This week Poll Vault tracked more than 100 new polls across topics. See them all →
Next Week
Does the national service consensus convert into anything. More in Common'sl finding is the rare polling result that could plausibly underwrite legislation. The American Service Project, the bipartisan Inspired to Serve framework, and various proposals for expanded AmeriCorps-style models have all been kicking around the Hill. The data says the public is there. Whether the politicians notice is the question.
Whether trust in the military stays insulated from foreign policy fatigue. Right now Americans honor service while increasingly opposing how it's being used. Those two things have historically been hard to keep separate. Vietnam-era polling shows trust in service members can take collateral damage from prolonged unpopular conflicts. The 58% high-trust number for the military is a precious civic asset. Watch whether it holds.
Young Americans and the 2026 midterms. Harvard IOP found a sharp link between not trusting election fairness and not intending to vote. If half of an entire generation has decoupled civic participation from any expected result, the turnout implications for November are real. They also aren't symmetric across the parties.
What Else We Tracked This Month
- Bipartisan Supermajority Views Money in Politics as Threat to Democratic Representation — POLITICO / Public First
- Broad Bipartisan Support for Congressional Age and Term Limits — NPR/PBS News / Marist Poll
- Houston Residents Badly Misread Each Other's Political Views Despite Shared Policy Ground — Kinder Institute for Urban Research
- Nearly Two-Thirds of Baltimore County Residents Distrust Local Government — UMBC Institute of Politics
- Tennessee Adults Show Widespread Gaps in Civic Knowledge and Political Engagement — University of Tennessee Institute of American Civics
- Americans Feel Hopeful About Their Own Lives but Deeply Pessimistic About the World — The Harris Poll
- 68% of CA Voters See Democracy Under Attack, Satisfaction Splits Sharply by Party — Haas Jr. Fund / UC Berkeley Citrin Center
- Texans Trust Librarians Over Elected Officials to Decide What Information Is Available — Texas Library Association / KRC Research
One More Thing
Decoration Day is still happening. Walk into any small American town this weekend and you'll see graves with fresh flowers, volunteers organizing the parade, veterans groups laying wreaths. The civic practice that gave the holiday its name has carried on quietly all this time. We just stopped paying attention to it.
The More in Common finding is the polling version of that walk. Underneath the headlines about polarization and collapsing trust, 8 in 10 Americans still say yes to the idea of serving together. That is the raw material of every civic project worth having.
The institutions are weaker than they should be. The political class is busy with other things. But the public, when asked plainly, says it is ready. That is a country worth being optimistic about.
Here's to a reflective and relaxing Memorial Day.
Until next time,
Alex Lundry
Due Data is powered by Poll Vault. Get the full data behind every poll mentioned above.
Want the full data behind every poll mentioned above?
Create free account →