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.
Latest Poll Reports
One in three Americans worry about falling behind in paying their rent or mortgage. One in three employed adults worry about losing their job in the next 12 months, including 15% who are “very worried” about losing their job.
Nearly 1 in 4 employed Americans say that it is either somewhat or very likely that they will face losing their job sometime in the next 12 months. The same proportion of all adults indicate that they are likely to fall behind on their rent or mortgage payments.
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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.
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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.