Gallup Poll Reveals Democrat Pride in America Has Collapsed, Republicans Remain Steady

A striking Gallup survey has revealed just how dramatically national pride among Democrats has deteriorated over the past quarter century, with the share of Democrats saying they are proud to be American plunging from the high 80s in 2001 to as low as 36 percent in more recent surveys, even as Republican pride has remained remarkably consistent and, in some years, has actually grown stronger.

Gallup has tracked this measure of national pride since January 2001, asking Americans whether they are extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud, or not at all proud to be an American. In the earliest years of the survey, national pride was close to universal across the political spectrum. Roughly 87 percent of Democrats identified as extremely or very proud to be American in 2001, a figure that stood in the high 80s to low 90s range for the country as a whole during that period.

That consensus has since shattered. According to Gallup’s most recent surveys, only 36 percent of Democrats now say they are extremely or very proud to be American, representing one of the steepest ideological declines the organization has ever recorded on any measure of national sentiment. Meanwhile, Republican pride has remained largely intact, hovering in the low to mid 90s in recent years and even climbing as high as 92 percent, an increase from 85 percent the previous year.

The divergence between the two parties has become so stark that Gallup researchers describe it as unprecedented in the survey’s 25 year history. This year’s gap between Republican and Democrat pride reached a striking margin, with the vast majority of Republicans expressing strong national pride compared to a small minority of Democrats, a gap that rivals record levels observed in the prior year’s survey as well.

Gallup’s data shows that the decline among Democrats did not happen all at once. National pride across all Americans remained relatively steady through the mid 2000s and into the following decade, with the overall share of proud Americans ranging between 81 and 85 percent from roughly 2005 through 2015. The first significant crack appeared in 2017, when overall pride fell to 75 percent, down from 81 percent the year before, a shift that coincided with the conclusion of the Obama presidency and the beginning of President Trump’s first term.

Since then, the decline has continued in fits and starts, with Democrat pride showing a particularly strong correlation to which party controls the White House. When Democrats hold power, their reported pride in the country tends to rise. When Republicans, and particularly President Trump, occupy the Oval Office, Democrat pride tends to fall sharply. Gallup’s own analysis has noted that Democrats’ pride appears far more sensitive to the occupant of the White House than does the pride expressed by Republicans or independents.

That pattern held true again this year. Democrat pride cratered to 36 percent following President Trump’s return to office, a dramatic drop from the 62 percent recorded the previous year while Joe Biden still occupied the presidency. It marks only the second time in Gallup’s 25 year trend that Democrat pride has fallen below the majority level, with the only other instance occurring in 2020, during the final year of President Trump’s first term, a period that coincided with the early stages of the COVID pandemic and nationwide unrest following the death of George Floyd.

Independents have also seen their sense of national pride slide, though not nearly as dramatically as Democrats. This year’s survey found independent pride sitting at a record low as well, reflecting a broader erosion of patriotic sentiment that appears to be driven overwhelmingly by the political left rather than any uniform national trend.

Generational data compiled by Gallup adds another layer to the story. Younger Americans, particularly those in Generation Z, report far lower levels of national pride than their older counterparts. According to polling averages compiled between 2021 and 2025, only 41 percent of Gen Z respondents said they were proud to be American, compared to 58 percent of millennials, 71 percent of Generation X, 75 percent of baby boomers, and 83 percent of the oldest generation surveyed. Researchers who study political attitudes have suggested that the sharp decline in patriotism among younger voters closely tracks their political affiliation, with Gen Z voters leaning more heavily toward the Democratic Party than any other generation.

Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told reporters that the drop in national pride among younger voters was largely unsurprising given the broader political attitudes that generation has developed in recent years, an observation that aligns with the party level breakdown showing Democrat pride falling far more steeply than pride among Republicans or independents.

The most recent installment of the survey, conducted this summer, found that overall American pride ticked up slightly to 58 percent from the previous year’s mark of 53 percent, driven largely by continued strength among Republicans and a modest uptick among independents. However, Democrat pride remained near its historic low, coming in at just 36 percent again this year, essentially unchanged from the previous survey and continuing to represent one of the lowest points ever recorded for any subgroup in the survey’s history.

Breaking the numbers down further, this year’s report found that just 14 percent of Democrats described themselves as extremely proud to be American, a category that stood in stark contrast to the 70 percent of Republicans who selected that same extremely proud designation. That 56 point gap between the two parties on the extremely proud measure alone rivals the record 57 point gap recorded the year before, underscoring just how entrenched this partisan divide in patriotic sentiment has become.

Gallup’s senior editor, Jeffrey M. Jones, who authored the survey’s official report, noted that at the beginning of the 21st century, American adults were nearly unanimous in describing themselves as extremely or very proud to be American, a level of consensus that stands in sharp contrast to the deeply polarized findings of recent years.