Something is happening to this country — and the numbers confirm what many of us have long suspected. As America approaches its 250th birthday, the mood of our country isn’t much to celebrate.
Fractures are running through our national identity that aren't healing. They're widening. So the real question isn't whether America is divided. It's whether anyone on the left actually wants that to change.
A new Issues & Insights/TIPP Unity Index poll lays it all out, and it’s not good. Not good at all. The monthly national survey asks Americans whether the country feels "very united," "somewhat united," "somewhat divided," or "very divided," then compiles responses into a single index score. A reading above 50 would suggest a unified national mood. In five years of tracking, that threshold has never once been crossed.
Not even close.
The index hit its all-time high of 40.8 in August 2025, shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House. That modest bump made sense, as Republicans pushed their Unity Index reading to 57.2. But the good feeling didn't last. By April 2026, the national Unity Index had dropped to 32.1. Republicans have settled back to 44.4. Democrats? They're sitting at a bleak 23.5.
That contrast tells the real story.
Under Joe Biden, Democratic Unity Index readings hit as high as 55. Now that Trump is president, Democrats can barely crack 35. Republicans, meanwhile, felt deeply alienated under Biden and are now, relatively speaking, more optimistic. Both parties essentially swap positions depending on who controls the Oval Office. It's less a measure of national unity and more a measure of who's winning.
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So, obviously, independents are probably the best measure. But their assessment isn’t any better. They've registered a persistently "un-unified" feeling for the entire five-year stretch. They've only topped 30 twice — once in July 2024, right after Biden's catastrophic debate performance, and once in June 2025. Today, independents sit at 26.4. That's barely above Democrats. That's bad.
All of this lands against a backdrop that makes the numbers feel almost understated. Last weekend, during the White House Correspondents' Dinner, yet another leftist tried to kill the president of the United States. This is the third attempt on Trump's life in two years.
And according to Issues & Insights, it matters.
“What does an assassination attempt have to do with unity?” Terry Jones of Issues & Insights asks. “After the failed assassination, some Trump foes took to the internet to suggest that they would have been fine if the president had been killed. Given that level of ideological rage and political polarization, perhaps Americans shouldn’t at all be surprised that our feelings of national unity remain so weak, as the I&I/TIPP Poll clearly shows.”
They're right. And I'll go a step further: I blame the left. Not just for the shooter, but for the culture that produced him and then not so quietly approves of what he tried to do. The normalization of political murder, specifically when the target is a Republican president, is becoming a feature, not a bug, of the modern left. It was true when Trump was a candidate. It's true now that he's back in office.
America turns 250 this year. We've survived a civil war. We've survived secession. But the people openly cheering for the death of a sitting president aren't interested in history lessons. They're interested in winning — by any means necessary. And their love of country is directly tied to how much power they have.
