Political Attitudes and Values

For a large majority of Americans, the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” In a new Pew Research Center survey, 68% say America’s openness to foreigners is a defining characteristic of the nation, while just 26% say “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.”

Around six-in-ten U.S. adults say the nation’s economic system unfairly favors powerful interests, though partisans are divided. Partisan differences extend to beliefs about why people are rich or poor.

Supporters of Republican and Democratic candidates in the upcoming congressional election are deeply divided over the government’s role in ensuring health care, the fairness of the nation’s economic system and views of racial equality in the United States.

Explore our new interactive feature to learn more about what traditional and populist party support looks like in Western Europe.

Sweden's general election extended two trends now prominent across Western Europe: The rise of right-wing populist parties and the decline of center-left parties.

People in Western Europe differ in their attitudes about major political parties and on key policy issues based on their ideology and whether their views are more populist or mainstream.

Americans and Western Europeans have broadly similar views on certain social and political issues. For example, majorities of Americans and Western Europeans see immigrants as beneficial to their economies and support certain rights for gays and lesbians.

A small share of the public – 14% – say they have changed their views about a political or social issue in the past year because of something they saw on social media.

For the average moderate legislator, about 54% of a member’s Facebook posts discussed local issues between 2015 and 2017. But for the average very liberal or very conservative legislator, just 38% of posts dealt with local issues.

Americans’ views of the new tariffs between the United States and some of its trading partners tilt more negative than positive.