For the first time since 2022, the amount of Americans pessimistic about the future of the country has dropped below 70%. But the numbers still aren’t great.

According to a recent NBC News national poll, which was conducted between September 13 and 17 on 1,000 registered voters, 65% of those surveyed believe America is on the “wrong track,” with only 28% feeling otherwise. Of these two-thirds, Republicans remain the most skeptical, with 92% who believe the country is on the wrong track. A much lower percentage of Democrats feel this way, sitting at 36%, while Independents are leaning into the concern found on the Right at 70%.

NBC noted that this poll is merely the latest in recent years that have had the same conclusion: most Americans think the U.S. is on the wrong track. Similar to the survey conducted in 2020, this poll found that at least some of the data was tied to how voters feel about the upcoming election. In this case, 65% marked themselves as “very interested.” And yet, the outlet highlighted, that is still “a 10-point drop from the same point in the 2020 election.”

The poll took into account the perspective of numerous age groups, ranging from 18 to over 75. And while it did not specify what explicitly caused the respondents to feel America was on the wrong track, it did highlight some of their top concerns. According to the data, inflation was the top issue on the voter’s minds. In terms of describing the economy in one word, 66% chose a negative word, and 66% said their family’s income was “falling behind” the cost of living.

Other indicators of why those surveyed feel poorly about the future of America includes the violence that has surfaced in the political square, such as the assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump. Most respondents felt “rhetoric [was] an important contributor” to those occurrences. Additionally, the poll revealed that the majority of those polled lack a strong confidence that either presidential candidate will “do a good job” as the leader of the country.

Another poll, this one conducted by Gallup, found similarly low views of the U.S. According to their research, an even more dramatic 76% were “dissatisfied with the ways things are going in the United States at this time.” Before these two latest polls were released, Newsweek’s David Faris took a shot at answering why Americans feel the way they do. According to Feris, the root causes range from “policy failure” to a series of financial woes. “None of these problems has an easy solution,” he wrote.

In fact, one commentator drew attention to the reality that there really hasn’t been a true solution. “Pollsters love to ask Americans what they think about the direction of the nation,” the writer from ABC 3340 expressed, but experts are starting to point out how “that common survey question has become obsolete.” In the words of Dante Chinni, the founder and director of the American Communities Project, rather than continuing to ask the same question year after year, “We need to ask ourselves why we keep asking it” in the first place. To ask whether America is on the “right” or “wrong track” is “the beginning of a conversation, not a meaningful measure.”

And if you go around asking random people their reason for feeling the U.S. is on the wrong track as Chinni went on to do, you’ll find a variety of unique and biased answers. Well, this makes at least one thing clear: we need an objective answer, at least the beginnings of one. Anything can be analyzed from a biblical worldview, which is rooted in objective truth, so perhaps that’s the best place to turn.

Family Research Council’s David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview, helped address this topic in what he shared with The Washington Stand. “For decades,” he said, “American pollsters have asked voters whether they believe the country is on the right or wrong track.” But “in my experience, it seems that regardless of who is in power, a majority of Americans sense the country is on the wrong track” — which is evidenced by the polls.

In some sense, Closson explained how the party running the country likely has much to do with who feels most strongly that the country is heading in the wrong direction. For instance, “if a Republican is in office, more Democrats will tell pollsters they think the country is on the wrong track. And the reverse is true if Democrats are in power.” But when viewing these same variables as a Christian, Closson emphasized, “a question about the trajectory of America provides an opportunity for deeper reflection.”

He continued, “Most all Americans can agree, whether they get their news from Fox News or MSNBC, that something has gone deeply wrong in our society.” However, where we tend to disagree “is the cause of why things are the way they are.” Believers “understand sin is at the heart of everything that goes wrong in our country and our institutions and in our people.” As such, these “questions related to the trajectory of the country are of limited value,” only truly serving to indicate “something all of us instinctively know, which is that something has gone wrong,” and “decades of polling data seem to show that a majority of Americans don’t see it getting better,” either.

Closson further contended that if we’re to shy away from subjective speculation and inch toward an objective reality, only the biblical framework “explains why politics can’t ultimately cure that which ails society.” Only from Scripture can we glean a proper understanding of the sin that’s corrupted the world, the gospel that offers hope through all circumstances, and how the future we long for rests securely for those who put their faith in Christ.

Jesus said in John 16:33 that in this world, we will face tribulation. But He also said to “take heart,” for He has overcome the world. We need this reminder, because it’s unlikely to show up in the news or the polls. And yet, in a world that always seems to be on the wrong track, Christians ought to best understand the only right track is the track of faith.