As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, most Americans (71%) say that, on the issues that matter to them, their side in politics has been losing more often than winning. Just a quarter say their side has been winning more often than losing.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis as part of our ongoing research into how Americans feel about current politics. For this analysis, we surveyed 5,140 adults from Jan. 16 to 21, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis and its methodology.
- This is not a new sentiment. Since 2016, a majority of U.S. adults have expressed the view that their side is losing more often than winning.
- The share of adults who say their side is losing more often than winning is up 15 percentage points since early 2020. But it has stayed roughly the same since September 2022, when 72% said this.
Majorities of adults in both parties say their side is losing more often than winning. Today, about eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (83%) say this – little changed since 2022.
However, when Donald Trump was president, more Republicans thought their side was winning. In February 2020, 69% of Republicans said their side was winning more often than losing, while just 29% said it was mostly losing.
Democrats, who currently control the White House, are more positive than Republicans about their political standing.
Still, about six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners (62%) say their side is losing more than winning on the issues that matter to them. This is slightly lower than the 66% who said this in 2022.
In early 2020, and at earlier points in Trump’s presidency, much larger majorities of Democrats said they felt like their side was losing more than winning. For example, 80% of Democrats said this in February 2020.
Ideological differences
Democrats
- Today, about four-in-ten liberal Democrats (38%) say their side is winning more often than losing, up from 29% who said the same in 2022.
- About a third of conservative and moderate Democrats (35%) say their side is winning more often than losing, nearly identical to the 34% who said this in 2022.
- Both groups of Democrats are more positive about how their side is doing politically than they were during the Trump administration, but less positive than they were at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Republicans
- Today, just 12% of conservative Republicans say their side has been winning more often than losing on the issues that matter to them. This is little changed from the 15% who said the same in 2022, but down from 76% in 2020, during Trump’s presidency.
- About two-in-ten moderate and liberal Republicans (21%) currently say they have been winning more often than losing – identical to the share who said this in 2022. In 2020, by comparison, a 58% majority of these Republicans said their side was winning more than losing.
- Views among both ideological groups of Republicans are roughly similar to what they were in 2016, when Obama was president.
Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis and its methodology. This is an update of a post originally published on Oct. 3, 2022.
