While Americans may be excited to heat up their grills and enjoy the July 4th Independence Day weekend, they are less and less excited about actually being American. According to new data from Gallup, the share of US adults who say they are “extremely proud” to be American is just 52%, a record low for the 16 years Gallup has been measuring the trend.
The drop in patriotic feelings is particularly acute among younger adults, who are about half as likely as their parents to describe themselves as being “extremely proud” to be American.
The peak for American pride since the turn of the century was in 2003—and the patriotic feeling has been diminishing almost every year since. For respondents 18 to 29 year old, there has been a whopping 26 percentage-point drop in those who say they’re “extremely proud” to be American. According to Gallup, this low patriotism may be characteristic of the millennial generation. The previous cohort of 18-to-29-year olds showed significantly higher feelings of American pride even before 9/11, when patriotism began to spike.
Other groups that tend to be less patriotic are political liberals (only 36% are “extremely proud”), Independents (44%), Democrats (45%), nonwhites (45%), and college graduates (47%).