Poll: A majority of voters now say country is on the right track

A majority of voters say the country is on the right track, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters in the May 24-25 survey said the country is on the right track.

By contrast, 41 percent of respondents said the country is on the wrong track and 8 percent are unsure.

Seventy-seven percent of Democrats said the country is on the right track along with 58 percent of independents.

Seventy-one percent of Republicans said the opposite.

Eighty-two percent of President Biden voters said the country is on the right track while 82 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump said the reverse. 

A 2020 Hill-HarrisX survey found 62 percent of voters said the country is on the wrong track while 38 percent said the right track. 

“Americans have generally been pessimistic about the direction of the country since at least the 2008 financial crisis and the great recession. Now, for the first time in a long while voters are starting to say that the country is heading on the right track, suggesting hope and optimism are taking root as we emerge from the pandemic lockdowns, people get vaccinated, and the economy opens back up,” Dritan Nesho, CEO and chief pollster at HarrisX, told Hill.TV.

“But it’s to be seen whether this is a sustained turning point. Right trackers are still only half of respondents, and the data suggests a tale of two nations. White voters, the elderly, Midwesterns, lower income and lower educated  voters – also overwhelming majorities Republican and Trump voters – still view the country as heading in the wrong direction,” Nesho added.

The most recent Hill-HarrisX poll comes as over 50 percent of voters are vaccinated against the coronavirus and Joe Biden entered the White House.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 955 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 3.17 percentage points.

—Gabriela Schulte