America's fears surge for 2022, a new poll finds

A new US survey has found that Americans are less optimistic and more nervous about what 2022 has in store for the world than they were heading into 2021.

According to the Axios/Momentive poll, conducted in mid-December and released on Friday, more than half of the more than 2600 participants — 54 percent — said they are more fearful than hopeful about what's in store for the world in 2022, while 44 percent stated that they are more hopeful.

That is a sharp turnaround from last year's survey, when 63 percent stated that they were more hopeful about the world in 2021 and only 36 percent said they were more fearful.

While Republicans were more pessimistic than Democrats and independents both years, all three groups turned more negative in this year's survey, with 69 percent of Republicans, 45 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents expressing more fear than hope.

Moreover, 51 percent of participants in the survey further stated that they were more fearful than hopeful about what's in store for the US in 2022, including 66 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents.

Despite the persisting spread of the Omicron variant across the US, 61 percent of Americans said they are more hopeful than fearful about what's ahead for the pandemic in 2022, with 37 percent saying they are more fearful.

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That optimism was consistent across the board, with little variation by party, age, race or gender, according to the Axiom report on the survey’s results, noting, however, that it is down from last year, when 76 percent said they were more hopeful than fearful about COVID.

Despite their worries about the US and the world, however, 68 percent said they're more hopeful than fearful about what 2022 has in store for them personally, with only 30 percent saying they're more fearful.

Meanwhile, in this year’s survey, only 17 percent of participants said democracy was the issue that matters most to them right now, second only to jobs and the economy, at 31 percent.

That urgency, the survey found, was driven largely by Democrats — who ranked it as their highest priority, at 24 percent — and people with a college degree or higher, also at 24 percent.

Republicans also ranked democracy as a high priority, at 15 percent, while it was basically a non-issue for independents, at only seven percent.

According to the pollsters, Americans' pandemic fatigue was obvious from people's responses when asked what they'd like to hear less about in 2022: COVID and former President Donald Trump. (Current President Joe Biden was a top choice among Republicans, too.)

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Their choices of the best words to describe 2021 suggested fatigue as well: "exhausting" (43 percent), "worrisome" (43 percent) and "chaotic" (31 percent).

The survey was conducted December 14-16 among a national sample of 2,602 adults. Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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