Republican Satisfaction Rises Ahead of Election

Ahead of the last presidential debate on Tuesday, Americans have less than two weeks to consider the state of the country and the direction they want it to go for the future. A new survey shows how one party has been increasingly satisfied with the state of the U.S. over the last few months, while others are still disappointed.

In a new Gallup survey, Republicans were the most likely to be satisfied with how the country is doing over the last few months. With 39 percent of Republicans saying they’re satisfied with the country in October, that dwarfs the 14 percent of Independents and 5 percent of Democrats that said the same. Democrats’ and Independents’ dissatisfaction with the state of the U.S. has held steady since July, while Republicans’ satisfaction has grown by nearly 20 percentage points.

Despite COVID-19 outbreaks re-emerging across the country and millions of Americans still unemployed, Republicans have been quick to highlight a perceived insignificance of the virus and an historic jobs recovery, both of which present plenty of evidence to the contrary. Those problems, along with another conservative Supreme Court justice added just before the election, have Republicans feeling relatively good despite their president trailing heartily in the polls.

Still, Republican satisfaction is unsurprisingly less than half of what it was before the pandemic. It’s also historically low right before an election, and regardless of the special circumstances surrounding COVID-19, it doesn’t bode well for Trump that 61 percent of Republicans are unsatisfied with their country. Couple that with the fact that the president’s approval rating continues to hover below 44 percent, and you get a better picture as to why Trump is trailing in regions where he held notable leads in 2016.