When asked for a poll, to sum up the year 2020 in one word, nearly a quarter of Americans answered “awful ,” “terrible” or “horrible.”
Carried out from December 16 to 20 by the University of Suffolk for the daily USA Today among 1,000 registered voters, this poll also shows that 15% of those polled used swear words and that almost all cited words reflecting a feeling of tension or pain.
Only 7% chose the option “OK / great / good” or “enlightening / revealing”, while 5% chose more neutral words such as “unprecedented” and “different”.
The year 2020 in the United States was marked by a presidential election mixing discord and record turnout, awareness of racial justice after the brutal death of George Floyd, and the continued rise in infections and deaths from COVID -19.
For USA Today, the country is at a crossroads, having to consider whether democracy has been damaged, whether racial issues have reached a turning point, whether the pandemic can be defeated and whether strong voter turnout will continue.
“When we look back 50 years from now, we will say to ourselves that this has been a year of profound changes,” confides to the daily Jim Messina, director of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.
These changes, according to USA Today, “have altered the contours of the economy, the power of social media, the power of grassroots political parties, and Americans’ perceptions of their government.”
The United States, he added, is “at the heart of a massive and deadly public health crisis, the repercussions of which are shaping other pressing challenges,” such as the loss of millions of Americans. their jobs because of the pandemic and the growing economic divide.
