A new poll has found that 62 per cent of Americans no longer view the US as a "shining city on the hill" as it was described by President Ronald Reagan in his 1989 farewell speech.

Reagan had famously described the US as a "shining city on a hill" – a beacon of hope and a model for the rest of the world, Xinhua news agency quoted Yahoo News as saying on Saturday.

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In the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 1,525 US adults online between June 29 and July 1.

According to the poll, a majority of Americans (52 per cent) believe that Reagan's remark was accurate at the time he said it; only 21 per cent disagree.

Now, a staggering 62 per cent of Americans have said that the US is no longer that shining city on a hill. Just 17 per cent agreed to it.

Overall, the poll found the American people in a "historically pessimistic mood" heading into a the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

The coronavirus pandemic may be the main reason for the public's depressed outlook, the poll results showed, since 65 per cent of recipients expressed that the crisis is "getting worse", while only 16 per cent said it is "getting better".

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Meanwhile, 49 per cent of the people surveyed said that the US response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been "worse than expected" versus just 11 per cent seeing the response as "better than expected", the poll showed.

Just 40 per cent of Americans said that the US is "an exceptional country whose values, history and political system are worthy of universal admiration", according to the poll.
(IANS)