The Economy, Summer Plans, and The Polls

Around Memorial Day, pollsters often ask Americans about their summer vacation plans. Responses are a rough barometer of feelings about the economy’s health and our own prospects. What have we learned from recent polls? Will most Americans take a summer vacation?

Last week the University of Michigan released its latest Consumer Sentiment Index, reporting that sentiment was “unchanged” from April, ending four consecutive months of “plunging declines.” Michigan attributed the change to the pause at the time of the survey in Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff pronouncements. Gallup reported that overall assessments of the economy were “unchanged” from early 2025 readings. In the May Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris poll, 51% of registered voters described the economy as strong for the first time since July 2021, while almost as many, 49%, described it as weak.

Most people in another question said their personal financial situation was weak (39%), but that represented an improvement from Harvard/Harris polls during the winter. Thirty-four percent said their situation was improving and 27% thought it was staying the same. In late May, CBS News/YouGov reported that Americans’ views about the economy were a bit “brighter” than they were this winter, but still more negative (54%) than positive (39%). In their February and March polls, a third were positive.

CBS added more detail to the overall assessments. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said the prices they were paying for goods and services have gone up in the past few weeks, 30% believed it had stayed the same, and 11% reported it had gone down. Only 24% thought their income was keeping up with inflation.

Gas prices are among the most sensitive political indicators, and a bare plurality in the poll said they are staying the same in their area (37%), while 30% thought they were going up, and 11% down. Of those planning to take a summer vacation, 89% said they would be doing so by road/car, Americans’ most familiar mode of transportation.

In the CBS poll, 43% said they planned to take a summer vacation this year, up from 39% in 2024. A substantial majority say they will not take a vacation (57%), with plans to stay at home. Using a different approach, a new Ipsos poll found that 58% said they plan to go on an overnight trip of more than 100 miles this summer, 47% travel by plane domestically, and 27% travel by plane internationally. Sixty-one percent said they would take a vacation to unplug and get away from it all, down from 69% in 2024.

And where would Americans like to go? In 2016, the Roper Center at Cornell looked at public interest in traveling to our national parks and reported that in 1955, 15% told Gallup they would visit a national park. When asked in the same poll what national parks they had ever visited, 15% said the Great Smoky Mountains followed by 11% the Grand Canyon and 10% Yosemite. With the availability and ease of car travel and the growing importance of recreation and conservation in our lives, Roper reported that “[b]y 2001, a Los Angeles Times [poll] found that 72% had made a visit” to a national park. In 2024, a record 332 million people visited a national park.

Last summer, when the Pew Research Center asked about the public’s views of 16 different federal government agencies, the National Park Service had the highest favorable rating (76%). Republicans and Democrats gave similar responses. Only 7% rated the agency unfavorably.

There is some tentative evidence that Donald Trump’s approval rating is inching up, and the perception that the economy is no longer declining (or at least leveling off) may be the reason. Less disruption from tariffs could be contributing. When asked by Harvard/Harris about Trump’s biggest failure or mistake thus far in his second term, the top response at 26% was “tariffs that disrupted the economy.”

Even with the tariff chaos and uncertainty of the past few months, people still view Republicans as better stewards of the economy than Democrats. In a new CNN poll, more people said the Republican Party’s views on the economy (38%) were closer to their own than the Democratic Party’s views (31%). This was also the case in three earlier polls since the spring of 2022.

Taking a vacation rests on assessments of the economic situation among other things, and uncertainty appears to be dampening summer holiday plans in 2025. If our national parks are short-staffed, the public is likely to notice.