A striking new survey from The Wall Street Journal and NORC Research Center has landed with the weight of a verdict: most Americans believe capitalism is not working, democracy is faltering, and the wealthy have seized a level of power that leaves ordinary people effectively voiceless. The findings are not a marginal signal from the political fringe. They represent a broad, cross-cutting disillusionment that should command serious attention from anyone who governs — or aspires to.
The headline number is stark. Fifty-one percent of Americans say capitalism is functioning “not too well” or “not at all well,” against 48% who say it is working “very well” or “somewhat well.” That near-even split, when read alongside a Gallup survey showing capitalism’s favorability dropping from 60% in 2021 to 54% in August 2025, traces a clear trajectory — not a snapshot, but a slide. And a Fox News poll from early 2026 found a record 38% of voters saying that moving toward socialism would be a good thing, up from just 18% in 2010. These numbers do not emerge from a vacuum. They are the measurable residue of lived experience: stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, medical debt, and a financial system that consistently socializes its losses while privatizing its gains.
On the question of regulation, the survey is equally unambiguous. While 45% of respondents embrace the familiar argument that free markets drive American success and government interference weakens it, 52% take the opposite view — that corporations hold too much power and that government should actively constrain that power through laws, regulation, and taxes. That majority is not calling for the abolition of markets. It is calling for accountability, for guardrails, for the state to perform the functions a democratic society has always expected of it. The distinction matters: this is not ideological radicalism, it is a practical demand for governance that works.
The poll’s findings on wealth and political power are, if anything, even more damning. Sixty-four percent of Americans say wealthy people hold more power in society today than they did fifty years ago — only 8% say less. In Washington specifically, 76% say billionaires have too much power and influence, 78% say the same of political lobbyists, and 73% point to large businesses. Compare that to the 2% to 3% who say “people like you,” small businesses, or working people have too much influence, and the picture that emerges is not a democracy in tension — it is an oligarchy wearing democracy’s clothes.
That perception of powerlessness runs deep into how Americans experience the political process itself. Only 16% agree that the average citizen has considerable influence on politics, while fully half agree that “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does.” These are not the grievances of a fringe. They are the conclusions of a majority that has watched its institutions fail to deliver — on healthcare, on housing, on climate, on wages — while those with resources to spend on lobbying and campaign finance have seen their interests reliably protected.
Confidence in Congress has effectively collapsed. Just 6% of respondents express a great deal of confidence in the institution, while 50% express hardly any confidence at all. These numbers are not merely embarrassing — they are a structural warning. Democratic legitimacy depends on public trust, and trust requires that institutions demonstrably serve the people who created them. Congress, in the eyes of most Americans, has failed that test.
The broader democratic picture is no more reassuring. Fifty-six percent say democracy is not working well or not working at all. Only 12% say it is working very well or extremely well. Just 34% think the phrase “committed to democracy and majority rule” describes America fairly or extremely well, and only 23% feel extremely or very proud of the way the country’s democracy functions. These are not numbers that describe a nation confident in its foundations. They describe one that is questioning them — and for reasons that are empirically grounded, not merely emotional.
None of this should be read as political symmetry, as though all sides have equally valid grievances about equally valid causes. The consolidation of corporate power, the capture of regulatory agencies, the systematic defunding of public institutions, the Supreme Court decisions that opened the floodgates of dark money — these are not abstract forces. They have authors, and those authors have, for decades, pursued a political project that deliberately shifted power upward. The public has noticed. The polling reflects not confusion but clarity.
What this survey ultimately documents is a population that has arrived, through experience rather than ideology, at conclusions that progressive economists and policy analysts have argued for years: that unregulated markets concentrate power rather than distribute it, that democratic participation requires material conditions to be meaningful, and that the state has a legitimate and necessary role in correcting those imbalances. The question is whether the political system can translate that widespread understanding into policy — or whether the very capture the poll describes will continue to prevent it.