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Pessimism about the country’s future has increased in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about America’s future, according to a new survey from the American Community Project.
And despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that crime in big cities is out of control, residents of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers are less likely than they were a few years ago to list crime and gun violence among the top concerns facing their communities.
Optimism about the future in large areas is also lower than last year hispanic community.
These are some snapshots of the new ACP/ipsos The survey, which takes a nuanced look at local concerns by breaking down the nation’s counties into community types using data points like race, income, age and religious affiliation. The survey assessed mood and preferences in 15 different types of communities, such as heavily Hispanic areas, large cities, and a variety of rural communities.
The common denominator in communities? Persistent worries about daily household expenses.
“There are concerns across the board about inflation,” said Dante Chinni, ACP founder and director. “The one thing that really unites the country is the economic crisis.”
Despite economic concerns, optimism is increasing in rural areas
Rural residents are feeling more upbeat about the country’s progress — even if most aren’t seeing the economic revival Trump promised.
The $15 price tag on a variety pack of Halloween candy at a Kroger supermarket last month shocked Carl Gruber. The 42-year-old man from Newark, Ohio, who is disabled and receives federal food assistance, was hardly oblivious to chronically high supermarket prices.
But Gruber, whose wife is also unable to work, is optimistic about the country’s future, primarily in the belief that prices will drop as Trump has suggested.
“Right now, the president is trying to bring back companies that have moved their businesses out of the country,” said Gruber, a Trump voter. “So, maybe we’ll start to see prices come down.”
Nearly 6 in 10 residents of rural Middle America – a classification of Newark in the survey – say they are optimistic about the country’s future in the next few years, up from 43% in the 2024 ACP survey. Other communities, such as heavily Christian areas or working-class rural areas, have also seen an increase in optimism.
“Every time I go to the grocery store I worry,” said Kimmy Pace, a 33-year-old unemployed mother of four from a small town in northwest Georgia.
But he is also hopeful about Trump. “Trump is in charge and I trust him, even if we don’t see the benefits yet,” he said.
Residents of big cities are worried about the future
By contrast, the share of big-city residents who say they are optimistic about the country’s future dropped from 55% last year to 45% in the new survey.
Robert Engel of San Antonio – a fast-growing city in Texas, the second most populous – is worried about what’s next for America, though less for his generation than the next. The 61-year-old federal employee, whose employment was not disrupted by the government shutdown nor by Trump’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, is nearing retirement and feels financially stable.
A stable job market, access to health care, and a fair economic environment for their adult children are their main priorities.
Recently, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 3% in September, up from 2.3% in April, when the President initiated the first substantial tariff increase, weighing on the economy with uncertainty.
Engel’s less optimistic view of the country is widespread. “It’s not just the economy, but democracy and polarization,” Engel said. “It’s a real concern. I try to be cautiously optimistic, but it’s very, very hard.”
Crime, gun violence less of a concern in urban America
Trump had threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon to fight runaway, urban crime.
Yet the data shows that the most violent crime has declined in recent years in those places and across the country. That’s according to the survey, which found that residents of America’s big cities and central suburbs are less likely to include crime or gun violence among the top issues facing their communities than they were in 2023.
For Angel Gamboa, a retired municipal employee in Austin, Texas, Trump’s claims don’t ring true in a city of nearly 1 million people.
“I don’t want to say it’s blown out of proportion, because crime is a serious matter,” Gamboa said. “But I think there is an agenda to scare AmericansAnd that’s very unnecessary.”
Instead, residents of large cities are more likely to say that immigration and health care are important issues for their communities.
Large cities are one of the community types where residents are most likely to say they have noticed a recent change in immigration, with 65% saying they have noticed an immigration-related change in their community in the past 12 months, compared to only 4 in 10 residents of communities labeled in the survey as evangelical hubs or rural Middle America.
Gamboa says he’s noticed changes, especially outside the Austin Home Depot, where day laborers regularly gathered in the morning to look for work.
He said, not anymore.
“Immigrants were not coming there to commit crimes,” Gamboa said. “They were coming to help their families. But when ICE was in the parking lot, they just needed to disperse people who were just trying to find jobs.”
Hispanic communities are less optimistic about the future
As Hispanic voters turn sharply toward Trump in the 2024 election, surveys show that residents of heavily Hispanic areas are feeling worse about the future of their communities than before Trump was elected.
Carmen Maldonado described her community in Kissimmee, Florida, a fast-growing, majority-Hispanic city of about 80,000 residents about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Orlando, as “deeply troubled.”
The 61-year-old retired, active-duty National Guard member is not alone. The survey found that 58% of residents of such communities are optimistic about the future of their community, down from 78% last year.
“It’s not just despair, but also fear,” said Maldonado, who says people in her community — even her fellow native-born Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens — are concerned about the Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of Latino immigrants.
Exactly a year ago, Trump made substantial inroads among Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election.
In addition to the future of their communities, Hispanic respondents are also significantly less likely to say they are optimistic about the future of their children or the next generation: 55% this year, down from 69% in July 2024.
Maldonado is concerned that the Trump administration’s policies have fostered anti-Hispanic attitudes and that this will persist during her adult child’s lifetime and beyond.
“My frustration comes from the fact that we are a big part of the United States,” she said, “and sometimes I cry thinking about these families.”
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Parvani and Thomson-Devote reported from Washington.
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The American Community Project/Ipsos Disaggregation Study of 5,489 US adults aged 18 and older was conducted from August 18 to September 4, 2025, using an 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.