What do we think 2026 will look like?
The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
Why we asked: One of the questions we have consistently tracked in the not-very-letter-of-the-law-named “tracker” is how we rate the year behind and the year ahead. In the first wave of the year, we ask about the year ahead.
What we found: As is typical, 2025 underperformed. The mean score people projected in January 2025 was a 6.8 for themselves and a 5.1 for the nation. When the calendar ran out in December, the heavy-news-filled year only merited a rating of 6.1/4.6.
This wave we asked people to again anticipate how great the year will be. We’re once again generally optimistic. We predict 2026 will have a mean score of 6.8 for “me personally” and for “my immediate family.” A pattern we see worldwide is that optimism falls off the further from ourselves/our control we go. This follows the trend as we drop to 6.2 for our community and just 4.8 for the country. We have the most hope for our jobs at 7.1 — basically due to the fact that there is no partisan split on that.
The lack of a divide on our jobs is fascinating, all things considered. The younger and more affluent are more optimistic, generally. Democrats are way more pessimistic about the year ahead than Republicans are. But heading into the midterms, if the year underperforms from an already-low baseline impression, that could bode poorly for incumbents.
More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:
What’s going on with young American men and how that impacts the rest of America, in five charts
People are not fans of dynamic pricing
We’re mostly exhausted, but women really are
One big way this holiday shopping season was different
What’s changed and what hasn’t in our food habits
The Ipsos Vibe Check: Here's how Americans feel about the government this week
The Ipsos Care-o-Meter: What does America know about vs. what does America care about?
