CBS News Poll: “Amid continued inflation and stock market declines, large majorities describe their mood as such, and the percentage who call the economy bad has hit highs for the Biden presidency. The number who say things in the country are going badly overall is at the highest level of President Biden’s tenure, too, as pessimism about the market, the economy and prices drives views looking forward — and outweighs optimism about both jobs and coronavirus, as we head into summer.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll from December found 23% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all cases and 26% believe it should be legal in most cases.

In contrast, 25% believe abortion should be illegal in most cases, and 12% believe it should be illegal in all cases.

Americans are also split on who should decide whether abortion is legal or not: 38% say the federal government, 34% say each state government, and 28% are unsure.

A new YouGov poll finds that 27% of Americans – including 37% of adults under 30 – say that they believe in astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets influences people’s lives.

About half of Americans (51%) say they don’t believe in astrology and 22% are unsure. 

The Atlantic: “The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.”

“U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff.”

A new Monmouth poll finds just 46% of the American public says the state of the union is strong, while another 27% say it is not too strong and 24% say it is not at all strong.

“When Monmouth asked poll respondents to use one word or phrase to describe the United States of America today, the most common response was ‘divided’… This sentiment accounts for more than 1 in 10 responses when combined with related words such as polarized, conflicted, and fractured. Other commonly mentioned top-of-mind words are chaos, mess, confused, and disappointing.”

“In all, 76% of poll respondents used a negative word to describe the current state of the country while just 15% used a positive one.”

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that, two years into the pandemic, 43% of U.S. residents say they feel “worse” about their “fellow Americans. Just 10% say they feel “better.”

Only 14% of Americans say they’re “better off” now than before the pandemic, while 35% say they’re “worse off.”

“The 2020 census undercounted the country’s population by 18.8 million people, the Census Bureau said, acknowledging that the count had underrepresented Black, Latino and Indigenous residents,” the New York Times reports.

“At the same time, the census overcounted the number of white and Asian residents.”

Janan Ganesh: “By cutting immigration and elevating technocracy, the coronavirus pandemic wounded populism. But the Ukraine war is much the worst setback for that movement since its electoral breakthrough in the US and UK in 2016.”

“In the west, a certain kind of leftism never recovered from the vicarious shame of the Soviet quelling of Hungary in 1956. This moment might come to be recorded as an equivalent watershed for the west’s populists.”

Gallup: “The percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has increased to a new high of 7.1%, which is double the percentage from 2012, when Gallup first measured it.”

Gallup: “Americans’ satisfaction with a variety of aspects of U.S. society and the state of policy in key issue areas remains subdued in 2022 after falling in 2021. In fact, in only one area — acceptance of gays and lesbians — are more Americans satisfied now than were in 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Over the past year, there have been further meaningful declines in 10 areas, most notably in satisfaction with energy policy, the nation’s military strength, the state of the economy, and abortion policy.”

Harry Enten: “What this data indicates is that, nearly two years into the pandemic in the United States, there has not been any real recovery in how Americans believe things are going.”

“We’re in a crisis when it comes to people believing in government and the best thing we can do is govern effectively.”

— Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), on NBC News.

NBC News Poll: “Overwhelming majorities of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, that their household income is falling behind the cost of living, that political polarization will only continue and that there’s a real threat to the nation’s democracy and majority rule.”

“What’s more, the nation’s top politicians and political parties are more unpopular than popular, and interest in the upcoming November midterms is down — not up.”

A new survey finds trust in government is collapsing, especially in democracies, Axios reports.

“People also don’t think media or business leaders are telling them the truth, and this suspicion of multiple societal institutions is pushing people into smaller, more insular circles of trust.”

Key finding: A majority of people globally believe journalists (67%), government leaders (66%) and business executives (63%) are “purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”