America's Best Days
52% Now Say America's Best Days Are in the Past
Americans are more pessimistic about the nation's future than they have been in over two years.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 31% of Likely U.S. Voters think America's best days are still to come, down from a recent high of 47% last September and the lowest level of optimism since April 2011. Just over half (52%) think the nation's best days are in the past. That's the highest finding since December 2011. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 14-15, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.