new poll

DES MOINES, Iowa — Pessimism about the country’s future has risen in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about what’s ahead for the U.S., according to a new survey from the American Communities Project.

And despite President Trump’s insistence that crime is out of control in big cities, residents of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers are less likely to list crime and gun violence among the chief concerns facing their communities than they were a couple years ago.

Optimism about the future is also down from last year in areas with large Hispanic communities.

These are some of the snapshots from the new ACP/Ipsos survey, which offers a nuanced look at local concerns by breaking the nation’s counties into community types, using data points like race, income, age and religious affiliation. The survey evaluated moods and priorities across the 15 different community types, such as heavily Hispanic areas, big cities and different kinds of rural communities.

The common denominator across the communities? A gnawing worry about daily household costs.

“Concerns about inflation are across the board,” said Dante Chinni, founder and director of ACP. “One thing that truly unites the country is economic angst.”

Rising optimism in rural areas, despite economic anxiety

Rural residents are feeling more upbeat about the country’s trajectory — even though most aren’t seeing Trump’s promised economic revival.

The $15 price tag on a variety pack of Halloween candy at the Kroger supermarket last month struck Carl Gruber. Disabled and receiving federal food aid, the 42-year-old from Newark, Ohio, had hardly been oblivious to lingering, high supermarket prices.

But Gruber, whose wife also is unable to work, is hopeful about the nation’s future, primarily in the belief that prices will moderate as Trump suggests.

“Right now, the president is trying to get companies who moved their businesses out of the country to move them back,” said Gruber, a Trump voter whose support has wavered over the federal shutdown that delayed his monthly food benefit. “So, maybe we’ll start to see prices come down.”

About 6 in 10 residents of Rural Middle America — Newark’s classification in the survey — say they are hopeful about the country’s future over the next few years, up from 43% in the 2024 ACP survey. Other communities, like heavily evangelical areas or working-class rural regions, have also seen an uptick in optimism.

Kimmie Pace, a 33-year-old unemployed mother of four from a small town in northwest Georgia, said, “I have anxiety every time I go to the grocery store.”

But she, too, is hopeful in Trump. “Trump’s in charge, and I trust him, even if we’re not seeing the benefits yet,” she said.

Big-city residents are worried about the future

By contrast, the share of big-city residents who say they are hopeful about the nation’s future has shrunk, from 55% last year to 45% in the new survey.

Robert Engel of San Antonio — Texas’ booming, second most-populous city — is worried about what’s next for the U.S., though less for his generation than the next. The 61-year-old federal worker, whose employment was not interrupted by the government shutdown nor Trump’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, is near retirement and feels financially stable.

A stable job market, health care availability and a fair economic environment for his adult children are his main priorities.

Recently, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff increases that burdened the economy with uncertainty.

Engel’s less-hopeful outlook for the country is broader. “It’s not just the economy, but the state of democracy and polarization,” Engel said. “It’s a real worry. I try to be cautiously optimistic, but it’s very, very hard.”

Crime, gun violence are less a concern in urban America

Trump had threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to fight what he said was runaway, urban crime.

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places, and around the country, has declined in recent years. That tracks with the poll, which found that residents of America’s Big Cities and Middle Suburbs are less likely to list crime or gun violence among the top issues facing their communities than they were in 2023.

For Angel Gamboa, a retired municipal worker in Austin, Tex., Trump’s claims don’t ring true in the city of roughly 1 million people.

“I don’t want to say it’s overblown, because crime is a serious subject,” Gamboa said. “But I feel like there’s an agenda to scare Americans, and it’s so unnecessary.”

Instead, residents of Big Cities are more likely to say immigration and health care are important issues for their communities.

Big Cities are one of the community types where residents are most likely to say they’ve seen changes in immigration recently, with 65% saying they’ve seen a change in their community related to immigration over the past 12 months, compared with only about 4 in 10 residents of communities labeled in the survey as Evangelical Hubs or Rural Middle America.

Gamboa says he has witnessed changes, notably outside an Austin Home Depot, where day laborers regularly would gather in the mornings to find work.

Not anymore, he said.

“Immigrants were not showing up there to commit crimes,” Gamboa said. “They were showing up to help their families. But when ICE was in the parking lot, that’s all it took to scatter people who were just trying to find a job.”

Hispanic communities are less hopeful about the future

After Hispanic voters moved sharply toward Trump in the 2024 election, the poll shows that residents of heavily Hispanic areas are feeling worse about the future of their communities than they were before Trump was elected.

Carmen Maldonado describes her community of Kissimmee, Fla., a fast-growing, majority-Hispanic city of about 80,000 residents about 22 miles south of Orlando, as “seriously troubled.”

The 61-year-old retired, active-duty National Guard member isn’t alone. The survey found that 58% of residents of such communities are hopeful about the future of their community, down from 78% last year.

“It’s not just hopelessness, but fear,” said Maldonado, who says people in her community — even her fellow native Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens — are anxious about the Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of Latino immigrants.

Just over a year ago, Trump made substantial inroads with Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election.

Beyond just the future of their communities, Hispanic respondents are also substantially less likely to say they’re hopeful about the future of their children or the next generation: 55% this year, down from 69% in July 2024.

Maldonado worries that the Trump administration’s policies have stoked anti-Hispanic attitudes and that they will last for her adult child’s lifetime and beyond.

“My hopelessness comes from the fact that we are a large part of what makes up the United States,” she said, “and sometimes I cry thinking about these families.”

Beaumont, Parwani and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. Parwani and Thomson-DeVeaux reported from Washington. The American Communities Project/Ipsos Fragmentation Study of 5,489 American adults aged 18 or older was conducted from Aug. 18 – Sept. 4, 2025, using the Ipsos probability-based online panel and RDD telephone interviews. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

SACRAMENTO — A new poll shows that former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter’s support in the 2026 governor’s race dropped after she tangled with a television reporter during a heated interview in October, an incident that rival candidates used to question her temperament.

Porter was the clear front-runner over the summer, but by late October she dropped behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, according to a poll released Friday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

Still, nearly half of the registered voters surveyed remain undecided, evidence that few Californians are paying attention to a race that remains wide open and was eclipsed in recent months by the costly and successful congressional redistricting battle that became a referendum on President Trump. Porter remains the most favored Democratic candidate, which is significant in a state that has not elected a Republican governor since 2006.

“She’s the leading Democrat among the various ones that are in there right now,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “But it’s because nobody really on the Democratic side has really jumped out of the pack. It’s kind of a political vacuum at the moment.”

The governor’s race was frozen in stasis for most of the year, first as Californians waited for former Vice President Kamala Harris to decide whether she was going to jump into the race. It wasn’t until late July that Harris announced, no, she was not running. Then, weeks later, Californians became captivated by a special election to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts — which set off a furious, expensive and high-stakes political battle that could help decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now that the special election is over, gubernatorial candidates can “rev up the public to pay attention,” DiCamillo said.

“It’s the time for someone to break through,” he said.

But it won’t be U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla. The senator would have been the top Democrat in the race, but not a heavy favorite, if he decided to jump in, the poll found. Voters gave him the highest favorability rating among all current and potential contenders in the governor’s race. After months of speculation, however, Padilla on Tuesday announced he would forgo a run for governor.

The new poll found that Bianco was supported by 13% of voters in the state, followed by Porter at 11%. The Berkeley poll in August showed that Porter led all candidates with 17% support, with Bianco in second place at 10%.

A Bianco representative said his lead in the polls was evidence that his campaign was resonating with voters.

“It is abundantly clear that Californians are demanding a new path forward,” campaign manager Erica Melendrez said. “Sheriff Bianco represents a safe California, an affordable California, an educated California and a leader with integrity and character that ALL Californians can be proud of.”

DiCamillo said Porter’s 6% drop over those three months was significant, given that the California governor’s race is so tight, but cautioned that it’s still early in the 2026 campaign season and a lot of shifting will happen before the June gubernatorial primary.

Porter’s campaign declined to comment on the drop in support and noted instead that she still led the Democratic field.

“Poll after poll continues to show Katie as the strongest Democrat in the race, driven by a growing coalition of grassroots supporters — not powerful special interests,” spokesperson Peter Opitz said. “Californians know her record of taking on Donald Trump and trust her to tackle our cost crisis, from skyrocketing rent and housing costs to rising healthcare premiums and unaffordable child care.”

Porter came under fire in October after an outburst during an interview with CBS reporter Julie Watts. When the Sacramento-based journalist asked Porter what she would say to Californians who voted for Trump, the UC Irvine law professor responded that she didn’t need their support.

After Watts asked follow-up questions, Porter accused the reporter of being “unnecessarily argumentative,” held up her hands and later said, “I don’t want this all on camera.”

The next day, a 2021 video emerged of Porter berating a staff member during a videoconference with a member of the Biden administration. “Get out of my f— shot!” Porter said to the young woman after she came into view in the background. Porter’s comments in the video were first reported by Politico.

Porter later acknowledged that she mishandled the television news interview, but explained that she felt the reporter’s questioning implied she should cater to Trump’s supporters. Porter also said she apologized to her staff member, saying her remarks were “inappropriate,” that she values her staff and could have handled that situation better.

Her Democratic gubernatorial rivals seized on the videos. Former state Controller Betty Yee called on Porter to drop out of the race, and businessman Stephen Cloobeck and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attacked her in ads about the uproar.

While difficult to assess, the negative news coverage and publicity surrounding those incidents appear to have taken a toll on Porter’s reputation. No other candidate experienced a similar shift in support.

According to the new poll, 26% of California voters had a favorable opinion of Porter, compared with 33% who saw her unfavorably — with the remainder having no opinion. That’s a major drop from when she was running for the U.S. Senate last year, when 45% of voters had a favorable opinion in February 2024 and 27% were sour on her.

Political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Berkeley institute that conducted the poll, said Porter looks vulnerable, and that makes the governor’s race a more attractive contest for current candidates and those who may be considering joining it.

Aside from Porter and Bianco, the poll found that 8% of voters favored former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat; the same percentage backed conservative commentator Steve Hilton. Villaraigosa had support from 5% of voters, Yee 3%, and California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond 1%. Cloobeck and former Democratic legislator Ian Calderon registered less than 1%.

Another potential candidate — billionaire developer Rick Caruso — was backed by 3% of voters, the poll found. Caruso said Monday night that he still was considering running for either governor or Los Angeles mayor and will decide in a few weeks.

Schickler said the results of Tuesday’s election may be a sign that moderate or business-friendly Democrats — including Caruso — may not fare so well in a state as Democratic as California. Voters across the nation delivered a sharp rebuke to Trump, electing Democrats in major races in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia and passing Proposition 50, the California ballot measure designed to help Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 election.

“Somebody like Caruso, his narrative would probably look a lot stronger if Democrats still seemed on the defensive and in disarray,” Schickler said. “But after Prop. 50 passing, big Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia, I think the argument for a need to change what we’re doing dramatically, at least in a state like California, is less likely to resonate.”

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 8,141 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Oct. 20 to 27. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.