This Quinnipiac University poll is getting a lot of attention, primarily for the finding that Congressional Democrats have only a 19% approval rating, while 72% disapprove. Those are terrible numbers, of course. But they are driven largely by the fact that many Democrats disapprove of their Congressional representatives because they don’t think they are aggressive enough, or far enough left.
The more salient takeaway from the survey is that Americans don’t seem to approve of anything. Thus, Congressional Republicans score 33%/62%. Respondents disapprove of President Trump by 40%/54%. They don’t like Tom Homan, or Pam Bondi, or Pete Hegseth, or Kristi Noem. They don’t approve of Trump’s handling of immigration issues (40%/55%) or of the economy (42%/55%). They don’t approve of the Supreme Court (40%/53%), and by 63% to 30%, they think the Supreme Court is driven mostly by politics, not law. And they don’t like the Big Beautiful Bill, as by 53% to 36%, respondents say it will hurt rather than help the country.
Basically, nothing and no one polls over around 40% approval.
And yet, we are living in a time of peace and prosperity. What explains this across-the-board negativity? It is hard to believe that people’s lives are so miserable that they feel negative toward everything; certainly by any historical standard, most lives are not miserable.
It is popular these days to blame social media for pretty much everything, perhaps with reason. I suspect that the universal negativity we see in the Quinnipiac poll comes mostly from outside sources–newspapers, television, the entertainment industry, academia, social media–rather than from people’s own experience. I think we are seeing a concerted effort by those who control most of the means of communication to drive disapproval of Donald Trump and his administration, but the negativity doesn’t stop there. For whatever reason, it spills over more broadly, as most people seem to be convinced they are living in a time of failure and misery.
I don’t know what to do about it. Log off and go fishing. Play catch. Enjoy the summer. And hope that poll responses like these are superficial and reflect the influences to which Americans are subject, rather than reflecting the world they live in.
