What Repeats Is Speaking

Americans rating moral values poor rises to 56%

For the first time in Gallup’s trend, majorities across party groups now say the country’s moral values are poor.

▲ Rising86% confidencehorizon Dec 2027data as of May 2026

Confidence-weighted forecast · history → projection

Tracking share of U.S. adults rating the state of moral values in the country as poor (percent of adults)

ObservedProjectionshaded band = confidence cone

86%

Confidence

2027

Horizon

Jun 2026

First called

Tracking

Status

The call

People disagree about which values are broken, but more people agree that something feels broken.

The number to notice

The share rating U.S. moral values as poor reached a record 56% in 2026.

What’s driving this

political moralization
institutional distrust
different groups defining morality differently
social media turning moral conflict into daily content

Sources · check usOpen

Moral Issues: Gallup Historical Trends ↗Gallup · 2026dataset Americans' Rating of Moral Values Hits New Low ↗Gallup · 2026-05-28survey

For you

In a world where people disagree about what “good” even means, you need your own written standards. Otherwise the loudest environment will choose your values for you.

What would change our mind

This call weakens if Gallup’s poor rating falls below 45% for two consecutive years and the share saying moral values are getting worse falls below 65%.

Behind the numbersOpen

Gallup asks Americans to rate the overall state of moral values in the country as excellent, good, only fair, or poor. The poor rating was 44% in 2013, 43% in 2016, 40% in 2020, 54% in 2023, 44% in 2025, and 56% in 2026. The 2025-to-2026 jump shows this is politically sensitive and can move with the national environment, so the projection is about sustained negativity, not a smooth straight-line decline.