While millions of Americans will celebrate the founding of the United States this week with fireworks or cookouts, those July 4 festivities will be set to a backdrop of declining national pride driven by Gen Z, according to a new poll.
Why It Matters
American national pride reached a record low in a new Gallup poll released on Monday. The survey found wide generational and partisan differences in American patriotism, which has declined across the board over the past few decades.
It found particularly low levels of national pride among Gen Z, an increasingly important age group in elections. The youth vote shifted rightward in the 2024 race, with President Donald Trump gaining new ground among voters between the ages of 18 and 29, according to election data.
What To Know
Only 58 percent of Americans reported feeling very or extremely proud of their country, according to a Gallup poll conducted from June 2 to June 19. That’s the lowest point since 2001, when the pollster began asking the question in its surveys.
That drop is largely fueled by Gen Z voters, only 41 percent of whom said they are proud to be an American in an average of polls from 2021 to 2025. This compares to 58 percent of millennials, 71 percent of Gen X, 75 percent of baby boomers and 83 percent of the Silent Generation.
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Democratic voters have also seen their sense of national pride plummet after Trump’s reelection last year; only 36 percent of Democrats said they are proud to be an American, down from 60 percent in 2024. Among Republicans, 92 percent said they are proud to be an American, compared to 85 percent in 2024, the poll found.
Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek it’s unsurprising that national pride has dropped among young voters.
“Young voters tend to be idealistic in their outlook, and when they look at American politics these days, there’s much to be frustrated with and to be disillusioned by,” Panagopoulos said. “For young voters, that is especially acute because it’s their foray into political life in America.”
Across the board, American pride has dropped in part because Americans are increasingly believing that politicians are unable to come together to solve people’s everyday problems, Panagopoulos said.
What People Are Saying
Jeffrey M. Jones of Gallup wrote in the survey’s report: “At the beginning of the 21st century, U.S. adults were nearly unanimous in saying they were extremely or very proud to be Americans. But that national unity has eroded over the past 25 years due to a combination of political and generational changes. Democrats today are much less likely than in the past to express pride in their country; in fact, their national pride has hit a new low. Additionally, Generation Z and millennials are much less proud of their country than their elders are.”
Northeastern University Professor Costas Panagopoulos told Newsweek: “It’s quite worrying in part because America is what it is because of our ability historically to come together as a nation to solve national and even global problems. And if we cannot unite as a country to do that around our identity as Americans, it is problematic.
What’s happening right now in America is that Americans across the board appear to be replacing their sense of national identity with their allegiance to partisan identity, or what appears to be happening is that our partisan identities are surmounting our national identity as Americans.”
What Happens Next
July 4 will likely see celebrations across the country, despite a decline in patriotism. Future political developments could determine whether patriotism makes a comeback.
