Overview
- The share expecting a high-quality life in five years fell to 59.2% in 2025, down 3.5 points from 2024 and 9.1 points since 2020, equal to about 24.5 million fewer optimists.
- Current-life satisfaction slipped to 62.1%, the second-lowest on record, while about 48% of adults qualified as “thriving.”
- Hispanic adults’ optimism dropped from 69.3% to 63.2% in 2025, and Democrats fell from 64.7% to 57.1%, with Republican gains insufficient to offset the national decline.
- Gallup links the largest earlier slide in 2021–23 to high inflation and affordability stress, and interprets 2025’s further drop as reflecting political change effects.
- Findings are based on 22,125 Gallup Panel interviews conducted across four quarters in 2025, with an overall margin of error of about ±0.5 percentage points.