Welcome back — Due Data took two weeks off for family, sunshine, and the Fourth of July. The polls kept coming, though, and they piled up around a fitting theme: at 250 years old, America isn't quite sure what it's celebrating.
America turned 250 this month, and the polling reads less like a birthday card and more like a mid-life inventory. We still love the country — but a majority thinks it has wandered off from what it was supposed to be, most of us can't explain what we're celebrating, and the generation inheriting the whole thing has a few objections. Here's what nearly thirty surveys say about who we think we are at 250.
They Love It. They Think It's Lost.
Let's start with the good part. 79% of Americans say they're proud to be American and 86% say they're grateful for it, per a big Cato Institute / Morning Consult survey of 2,253 adults. 76% feel good about the founding, and 86% call the Constitution essential to protecting their rights. On paper, the patriotism is fully intact.
Then, a record scratch: nearly 6 in 10 say the country has drifted from its founding principles, and more than half fear the whole experiment could expire within their kids' lifetimes.
Almost nobody showed up for the party: only 26% of Americans have heard "a lot" about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, Marquette's Law School Poll finds — roughly the same modest attention we paid the 1976 Bicentennial. What's changed in 50 years is who's paying attention: 76% of Republicans say they're interested in the Semiquincentennial versus 43% of Democrats. In 1976 the two parties were within three points of each other. Incredibly, the country's own birthday has turned into a partisan event.
Flunking the Quiz, Begging for a Retake
If the mood is anxious, the report card explains some of it. In that same Cato data, 58% of Americans can't identify the main purpose of the Constitution and 57% don't know why independence was declared. A separate Cato release on the Fourth put it starkly: nearly half of Americans can't say why the holiday exists at all.
College students do worse.
Only 39% know how long a senator's term runs, just 26% can place "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in the Gettysburg Address, and 57% told College Pulse they'd leave the country if it were invaded.
But there are some encouraging bipartisan numbers: 80% of Americans say schools put too little emphasis on civic education — 51% say much too little — and the NBC News poll of 3,000 adults found that view holds across every ideology and age group. The Institute for Governance and Civics clocks 84% calling it "very important" for schools to prepare responsible citizens — ranking it above career prep. In California, nearly 9 in 10 want the founding documents taught. Fixing this is one of the least controversial ideas in American politics.
The civic knowledge has drained out. The demand to refill it hasn't — and it's bipartisan.
— Alex Lundry, Due Data
Out of Many, Still
Here's the counterweight to all that drift-and-decline anxiety, and it lands right on the anniversary. Even now — with the most restrictionist immigration policy in decades running in Washington — 73% of Americans still tell Gallup that immigration is good for the country. That's off last year's record 79%, but it sits comfortably above the 25-year average, and the dip is almost entirely Republicans (down 14 points to 50%). The appetite for the e pluribus part of the bargain is durable: 81% back a citizenship path for immigrants brought here as children, and 58% oppose deporting everyone who's here illegally.
The assimilation engine still turns, too. A huge Pew survey of 4,923 Hispanic adults finds only 27% of Hispanic immigrants call themselves "a typical American" — but that climbs to 60% in the second generation and 72% in the third. The story the country tells about itself at the founding is, mechanically, still happening.
Gen Z Files a Dissent
Every one of those civics gaps is widest among the young, and it isn't only knowledge.
Their national pride sits below a majority — 48% among 18-to-29-year-olds, against 66% of adults overall in Marquette's numbers. And they're rewriting the economics while they're at it: 53% of Gen Z told Cato they prefer socialism to capitalism, and Economist/YouGov finds socialism running a net +20 favorable among under-29s even as it stays underwater with the country as a whole. Read that as a verdict on the status quo more than a manifesto — and it shows up in party loyalty, too. CivicScience finds 48% of Gen Z have changed or seriously considered changing their party affiliation, roughly double the churn among older partisans, driven mostly by the sense that their own side drifted from its values.
This stretch Poll Vault logged more than two dozen Civics & Democracy polls alone — see them all →
Low Trust, High Demands
Zoom out to our democratic machinery and the confidence is thin. A new WSJ/NORC survey finds 75% of Americans think billionaires have too much power in Washington, only 16% think average citizens have any real influence, and a jaw-dropping 12% say American democracy is working very or extremely well. Two-thirds think the country is in decline. Even confidence in capitalism has slipped below half, down from 60% a decade ago.
But dismissiveness isn't the same as disengagement — and this is where the 250th story turns hopeful. Americans aren't asking government to disappear; they're asking it to work. Partnership for Public Service finds 60% still credit the federal government with adapting to the nation's needs over 250 years. When Searchlight/Zeteo asked about healthcare, majorities wanted Washington to cover serious illness (63%) and prescriptions (60%) — but 70% would keep their own plan rather than hand the whole system over. Nine in ten Texas voters just want efficiency audits of local government. And a sharp Pew analysis shows our institutions are genuine outliers — the second-hardest constitution in the democratic world to amend, the only democracy that elects a combined head of state through an Electoral College — with 63% wanting to swap that College for a popular vote. That's reform energy, not exit energy.
The most useful finding of the batch may be the most fixable. A University of Maryland experiment found that simply telling skeptical voters that veterans and military families help run elections cut the trust gap between 2020 believers and deniers in half. And the long arc bends: NBC's More Perfect survey finds views of race relations up a full 20 points since the grim summer of 2020.
This is a country furious with its government and still unwilling to give up on it.
— Alex Lundry, Due Data
The Rest of the Ballot
🗳️ 71% of Wisconsin Republicans see election workers as partisans who need oversight — evidence the civic-trust gap may run in one direction more than the other.
🇪🇺 Europeans are rallying to the EU as a geopolitical anchor just as Americans sour on their own institutions.
🇨🇦 Canadian pride in the armed forces, the economy, and democracy all rose in 2026. Somebody up north is having a good birthday year.
🎣 Most Americans get hit by scams daily and few know how to report them, per AP-NORC/Gallup — a small, concrete civic-literacy gap with an obvious fix.
The Year of 250
- America250 goes year-long. Federal programming ramps all through 2026 — watch whether that 76%/43% partisan interest gap narrows or calcifies as the events roll out.
- Civic-ed bills. With 80% demanding more civics, expect state legislatures and 2026 candidates to campaign on it. The public's permission slip is already signed.
- The Gen Z realignment. Half of them are questioning their party. Both coalitions will spend the midterms trying to answer the dissent.
- Disaster trust. Hurricane season is underway and half of last year's flood survivors say government failed them. The next big storm is also a competence referendum.
What Else We Tracked This Week
- 3 in 10 Americans Say Israel Has Committed Genocide as Support Erodes Across Party Lines — AP-NORC
- Democrats Lead in Four Competitive House Districts as Trump Stays Underwater — House Majority PAC
- Americans Want More Kids Than They're Having — Institute for Family Studies
- Half of Parents Fear Kids Rely on AI Too Much — Deloitte
- Medicare Advantage Plans Deny Over Half of Prior Auth Requests for Costliest Care — KFF
- Most Vermonters Call Their State Unaffordable; Four in Ten Consider Leaving — AFP / UNH
- Nearly Three-Quarters Say AI Is Happening to Them, Not for Them — The Harris Poll
Until next time,
Alex Lundry
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