Poll finds declining patriotism as Americans question the Dream

The share of Americans who call themselves very patriotic has fallen, even as a big majority still says the nation has achieved its founding ideals at least a fair amount, if not a great deal. The CBS News America-at-250 poll, published June 29, 2026, lands just before the country’s July 4 semiquincentennial.

Almost half of Americans say America’s best days are in its past, and just half are even somewhat confident that the American Dream is attainable today. Most say it is mainly just a few people at the top who have a chance to get ahead, and most of those respondents also say U.S. democracy is under threat. Many Americans connect limited economic opportunity with political fragility, and most see politics, more than culture, as the force pulling people apart.

Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys, examined the results alongside broader polling on attitudes about democracy and economic prosperity.

In a 2006 CBS News/New York Times poll, 62 percent of Americans described themselves as very patriotic. That was down from 72 percent just after the September 11 attacks, but above the 55 percent recorded in a poll conducted ten years before 2006. The country also has competing versions of its own birthday: Freedom 250, a White House-connected public-private partnership, and America250, the congressionally created nonpartisan body established a decade ago to organize celebrations nationwide. Confusion around the dual efforts fueled concern when performers dropped out of a Freedom 250 concert series over politicization.

Historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, says the republic is built on an idea rather than a shared ethnicity or religion, which makes it messy but durable, and that most republics in history do not survive 300 years.