Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Americans are anxious and frustrated about the presidential campaign, an AP-NORC poll finds

Most Americans are feeling a lot of emotions heading into Election Day, but excitement is not one of them

Linley Sanders
Thursday 31 October 2024 04:03
Election 2024 AP Poll Anxity
Election 2024 AP Poll Anxity (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

Most Americans are feeling a lot of emotions heading into Election Day, but excitement is not one of them.

A new poll from The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 7 in 10 Americans report feeling anxious or frustrated about the 2024 presidential campaign, and a similar share say they're interested.

Only about one-third say they feel excited.

There's a broad feeling of uncertainty hanging over the 2024 presidential contest during the last week of the campaign. The race is competitive nationally and in key swing states, according to recent polls, with neither Democrat Kamala Harris nor Republican Donald Trump showing a measurable advantage. At the same time, the candidates have offered closing arguments that are in stark contrast with each other, with Harris arguing that Trump is obsessed with revenge and his own personal needs, while Trump referred to Harris at a rally on Sunday night as “a trainwreck who has destroyed everything in her path.”

Some groups are even more anxious than they were four years ago, even though that election took place in the midst of a deadly pandemic. In 2020, an AP-NORC poll found that about two-thirds of Americans were anxious about the election, which is not statistically significant from the new result. But for partisans, anxiety is dialed a little higher. About 8 in 10 Democrats say anxious describes how they are feeling now, up slightly from around three-quarters in the last election. About two-thirds of Republicans are anxious, a moderate uptick from around 6 in 10 in 2020.

Independents, by contrast, haven't shifted meaningfully, and they're also feeling less worried than Democrats or Republicans. About half say they are anxious, similar to the finding in 2020.

Other emotions have gotten more intense compared to past election cycles, including excitement. About one-third of Americans report feeling excited about the 2024 campaign, up from around one-quarter in 2016. But a majority of Americans say they are not excited about this year's race.

One thing has stayed fairly constant, though: Americans' level of frustration with the campaign. Roughly 7 in 10 Americans say frustrated describes their emotional state, similar to 2020.

For those Americans, though, there is light on the horizon — soon, the election will be over.

___

The poll of 1,233 adults was conducted Oct. 24-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in