In the yr 1998, Bill Clinton was facing impeachment proceedings, “Titanic” was cleaning up at the Oscars and most households still had landline phones. Gallup and USA Today referred to as up 1,055 Americans on these landlines and requested them for his or her finest predictions a few yr in the distant future: 2025.
Those predictions are actually memorialized by way of polling archives maintained by the Roper Center at Cornell University. So, with the ultimate days of 2025 now slipping into the previous, right here’s a glance again at how a few of them held up.
Some have been surprisingly prescient. Most Americans predicted that, over the subsequent 27 years, the nation would have elected a Black president, homosexual marriages could be authorized and commonplace and a “deadly new disease” would have emerged.
Most individuals in 1998 accurately doubted that area journey could be frequent for bizarre Americans or that alien life kinds would have made contact.
Other predictions didn’t maintain up as nicely. About two-thirds of Americans thought the nation would have elected a feminine president by now. More than half anticipated a treatment for most cancers and 61% anticipated that “people will routinely live to be 100 years old.” (The world is not quite there yet.)
The ballot additionally requested some much less quantifiable questions in regards to the path the nation was taking. It revealed loads of pessimism.
While 70% thought high quality of life would enhance for the wealthy, respondents have been about break up on whether or not issues would enhance or worsen for the center class, and most anticipated life to worsen for the poor. Nearly 8 in 10 anticipated Americans in the long run to have much less private privateness, and 57% thought that they’d expertise much less private freedom. Most additionally anticipated larger crime charges, poorer environmental high quality and decrease ethical values. A 71% majority stated it will be tougher to elevate kids to be good individuals.
There have been a couple of vivid spots in Americans’ outlook: Most believed race relations would enhance and that medical care could be extra out there, if much less inexpensive.
Gallup continues to be polling, after all, albeit with much less of an emphasis on landlines. So we will get a way of how Americans’ general outlook on the nation has modified over the previous 27 years. In fall 1998, about 60% of Americans stated they have been happy with the best way issues have been going in the US.
Today, that number stands at 24%.