Traditional polling forces citizens to place themselves into set categories, even on issues in which they are uninformed and uninterested.
The Mood of the Nation poll gives citizens a series of open-ended questions, allowing them to answer in their own words—saying what is on their minds, what is important to them, and thereby providing a unique window on contemporary American politics.
Read more about how the poll was conducted and the team that makes it happen.
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The McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll, conducted with 824 registered U.S. voters by YouGov from February 18 to 23, 2026, included questions aimed at better understanding voter preferences in the upcoming midterm elections.
Beyond the traditional “generic ballot” question concerning whether voters prefer to vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress, this survey asked respondents to explain – in their own words – why they prefer the Congressional candidate of one party rather than the other. Further, it also asked them to speculate about the reasons people may have for voting for the opposite party.
Americans show a strong preference for their elected executives — governors as well as the president — to achieve their political goals through conventional, sometimes slow, procedures, according to the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll.
Results showed marked partisan differences. For example, 26% of all survey respondents rated a presidential action of firing all recently hired federal employees as “very appropriate,” including only four percent of Democrats and just over half of Republicans.
Still, the poll finds that large numbers of Republican prefer the president use conventional actions to achieve policy goals. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans indicated that it would be “very appropriate” for the president to initiate “a year-long analysis to identify the government positions that waste the most money.
New findings from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll show that a sizeable minority of Americans agree with the statement, “When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn.’”
The survey, which was conducted Sept. 23-27 among 1,000 adults, found that the desire for drastic institutional change was somewhat more common among younger generations, Hispanic Americans, men and Trump voters.
The question was included in a survey in an attempt to help understand the depth and extent of Americans’ dissatisfaction with institutions and the status quo.