{"id":248834,"date":"2026-05-30T15:48:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248834\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T15:48:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:48:43","slug":"times-siena-poll-43-of-voters-dissatisfied-with-both-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248834\/","title":{"rendered":"Times\/Siena Poll: 43% of Voters Dissatisfied With Both Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty-three percent of voters are dissatisfied with both major political parties, according to a recent New York Times\/Siena poll<\/a> \u2014 the latest sign that the frustration that has built over the last decade will continue to roil American politics for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

The survey\u2019s findings highlight the risks for both parties heading into the midterms and the next presidential election, with Democrats deeply discontented with their own party<\/a> and an increasingly unpopular Republican president<\/a> continuing to consolidate support among his loyalists.<\/p>\n

The results come as Americans\u2019 political disillusionment seems only to be deepening. It has been nearly a quarter-century since a majority of voters thought the country was headed in the right direction. Trust in the government<\/a> and many other institutions remains near all-time lows, and there have been several recent high-profile incidents of political violence<\/a>. While ideas like significant overhauls of the parties still face stiff headwinds, the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo has created better conditions for such efforts<\/a> than has existed in a long time.<\/p>\n

Overall, the Times\/Siena survey found that just 26 percent of voters felt satisfied with the Democratic Party and that 33 percent felt satisfied with the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Alienation is felt most intensely among younger voters; nearly two-thirds of respondents under the age of 30 expressed dissatisfaction with both parties. Young voters are increasingly likely to identify as politically independent \u2014 a recent report<\/a> from Gallup had the number of independents at a three-decade high \u2014 and, so far, they are more likely to remain that way as they age than they were in previous generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth parties are the same,\u201d said Max Cook, 24, a college student in San Diego. \u201cThey both have the same level of corruption. They both take lobbying money. It\u2019s different lobbying, but the same corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Cook said he did not vote in 2024 because he did not care for either major party candidate. He added he leaned toward Republicans as the \u201clesser of two evils\u201d but worried that neither party was putting America first.<\/p>\n

He is far from alone. Many dissatisfied voters lament that Washington is focusing too heavily on foreign affairs. Nearly two-thirds of those unhappy with both parties want politicians to \u201cpay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate more on problems here at home,\u201d compared with 47 percent of those who are satisfied with at least one of the political parties.<\/p>\n

The idea of putting America first was a central component of the rise of the Tea Party and President Trump\u2019s brand of politics. The dissatisfaction with foreign policy evident in the poll speaks to the magnitude of the risk Mr. Trump is taking with the war in Iran, even as he brushes aside complaints about the war\u2019s effects on the economy, and his steadfast support for Israel.<\/p>\n

The question of how much the American government should support Israel has already upended the Democratic Party, contributing to its defeat in 2024. And the poll found that it was one of the issues that most divided Republicans, too: Thirty-eight percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they wanted the party to move away from Mr. Trump<\/a> on Israel.<\/p>\n

About 80 percent of dissatisfied voters in the poll opposed economic and military aid to Israel, and references to Israel came up time and time again in follow-up conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump said he was going to drain the swamp, and if anything, it\u2019s gotten worse,\u201d said Dakota Janssen, 26, a machinist from Saratoga County, N.Y., who identifies as a libertarian. \u201cAnd Democrats don\u2019t end up doing what they say they\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of corporate greed that goes on,\u201d he added. \u201cA lot of foreign donations from Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

With widespread concern about the nation\u2019s economy, candidates as politically disparate as Mr. Trump and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City have been able to engage dissatisfied voters through populist messaging. Eighty percent of dissatisfied voters said the economic and political system needed major changes or to be torn down entirely, and 77 percent said the economic system was generally unfair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care which party I\u2019m voting for as long as they\u2019re representing people instead of corporations,\u201d said Tai Vetrone, 18, of Waltham, Mass.<\/p>\n

While voters who are satisfied with at least one party were less likely to want to overhaul the system, the desire for significant change is widespread, showing the opportunity for dissatisfaction to spread further.<\/p>\n

Mr. Vetrone, who said he leaned Democratic, likes the message of people like Mr. Mamdani, but feels that some Republicans have also captured the spirit of economic populism.<\/p>\n

In the survey, dissatisfaction was felt most acutely among Democrats. Forty-four percent said they were unhappy with the Democratic Party, compared with about a quarter of Republicans who said the same of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

This dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party has resulted in a rejection of several establishment candidates in primary elections over the last year. Progressive candidates like Graham Platner in Maine and Mr. Mamdani in New York were once seen as operating on the fringes of the party, and are now being discussed, however fancifully, as the future of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

But as American politics becomes more polarized, the parties risk alienating the electorate. A majority of dissatisfied voters want the Democratic Party to move toward the ideological center, while a staggering 90 percent want the Republican Party to move away from Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parties have gone pretty wide on the spectrum of left and right, while most people are more in the middle and agree with points on both sides,\u201d said Patrick Tehonica, 25, a construction worker in upstate New York who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2024, but felt he had not had good choices. \u201cI don\u2019t really feel like I have a political home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Going forward, the question is whether dissatisfied voters will look for other options or opt entirely out of the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t vote for federal elections,\u201d said Elizabeth Arias, of Seattle, who added that she used to vote mostly for Democrats. \u201cI only vote for my local elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Arias, a bookkeeper for a nonprofit, said that when she contemplated the political system in the United States, she often thought of a quote from Julius Nyerere, a former president of Tanzania, which she paraphrased: \u201cAmerica is a one-party system, but in true American extravagance, they have two parties.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty-three percent of voters are dissatisfied with both major political parties, according to a recent New York Times\/Siena…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[651,46937,9,11,10,49920,1707,5285,1876],"class_list":["post-248834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-democratic-party","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-times-siena-college-poll","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-republican-party","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}