It turns out that Joe Biden really did crush Americans’ dreams for the future. Just look at how the vibe changed 5 years ago

President Donald Trump rode Americans’ gloom about inflation and the economy to a surprising reelection in 2024. Then, a year later, upstart Democrats including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani rode concerns about “affordability” to an even more surprising sweep. 

It turns out the inflation wave of 2021–23 was a really big deal, according to the mother of American opinion polling. 

A long-running Gallup poll found the percentage of U.S. adults who anticipate a high-quality life within the next five years slumped to 59.2%, its lowest share since the organization began asking this question nearly two decades ago. 

The poll—based on data collected over four quarterly measurements in 2025 among 22,125 U.S. adults—revealed a notable decline in sentiment, measuring a 3.5-percentage-point drop-off from 2024. 

“If you look at the optimism metric for future life, that really came down a lot from 2021 to 2023, and that corresponds really closely with the worst of the inflation crisis,” Dan Witters, research director of the Gallup national health and well-being index, told Fortune. “The economic pressures of being able to afford things like food and fuel and gas and health care—that really can have a deleterious effect.”

Moreover, the study found the number of Americans who rate both their current and future lives high enough to be characterized as “thriving” dropped to 48%, down more than 11 points from a high in June 2021, and...