A new national poll conducted by the Civitas Institute on June 6 intended to measure public opinion on various topics like individual liberties, democracy and capitalism in the United States found that many Americans hold a negative outlook on the nation’s current state. 

The American Civic Life Survey was conducted by Civitas Institute faculty fellow and UT government professor Daron Shaw in collaboration with polling firm YouGov. Shaw said the poll was conducted to understand current opinions on the Institute’s core research concepts and make the results available for undergraduate and graduate use. 

When asked to complete the sentence “Would you say things in the United States today are,”  62% of respondents said things are “off in the wrong direction” compared to 28% who said things are “generally headed in the right direction” and 11% who said they were unsure. 

“I think the big picture view is there’s a sort of pervasive pessimism amongst Americans right now,” Shaw said. “There’s a belief in these core concepts, freedom of speech, liberty, religion, all of these fundamental freedoms that are bounded, particularly by the Bill of Rights, but even more particularly in the First Amendment to the Constitution … (but) there are differences amongst certain groups about how well those concepts have been protected.”

When evaluating the effectiveness of democracy in the United States, only 46% of respondents had a positive outlook, 39% had a negative outlook and 15% fell in the middle. Results also revealed 50% of respondents had a positive opinion of capitalism in the U.S., 31% had a negative view and 19% fell in the middle. 

Shaw said one interesting poll finding was that when asked how important certain constitutionally-guaranteed rights were to American democracy, respondents ranked the right to bear arms lower than other fundamental freedoms. But when asked which of those rights is the most important to American democracy, more respondents chose the right to bear arms. 

“Even though there’s a lot of people who just don’t read (the right to bear arms) as important as the right to vote, freedom of speech, etc., when you ask them what’s the most important, there’s a core of Americans who cited the Second Amendment,” Shaw said. “I just think it’s a really interesting question … because I don’t think that’s been asked that way by anybody else.”

The poll also asked how easily certain groups of people could exercise their freedom of speech without fear of being penalized. Respondents ranked wealthy people, liberals and men as having the easiest time and religious Muslims, immigrants and working-class people as having the hardest time.

“You see some difference of opinion about how well freedom of speech has actually been implemented when it comes to people who look like them,” Shaw said. “While there’s very high levels of agreements of (first amendment rights) as a good thing … there’s disagreement about how well the current government, not only the Biden administration kind of institutions more generally, are living up to the promise in fulfilling what Americans think of the ideals associated with those things.”

Justin Dyer, executive director of the Civitas Institute, said the poll would be conducted several times over the next few years to track how public opinion changes. 

“(The poll) confirms, I think, what a lot of us probably just have a sense of, which is that the mood in the country right now is not optimistic about either the economy, our political system, our elections or how this general project of self-government is going right now,”  Dyer said. “So it highlights something that’s important for us and we as an institute. We’re interested in civic education, and we think civic education is an important part of maintaining self-government over time.”