Are We Heading in the Right Direction? What Sweden and Australia reveal about the optimism gap (So too Singapore, India and France)
A commentary by Victor Perton
On Thursday night I returned home to Australia after a wonderful holiday through the Baltic and Scandinavia. I had thoroughly enjoyed Stockholm, its beautiful archipelago and the extraordinary Swedish island of Gotland. Back home, still thinking about Sweden, I cooked a Gotland-style lamb meal for my family.
During my time in Sweden, I told anyone who would listen that I was Australian. Again and again, people responded warmly. Some had visited Australia. Others had children or friends who had lived, worked or travelled here. They spoke of Australia with affection.
Australians, too, tend to admire Sweden. We see a prosperous, peaceful and well-governed country with beautiful cities, strong public services, innovative businesses and an enviable quality of life. The conversations left me with the impression that Australians and Swedes see much to admire in one another’s countries.
That is why the latest Ipsos findings surprised me.
Ipsos asks people a simple national question:
“Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?”
The results for Australia and Sweden were almost identical. In Australia, 41 per cent said the country was heading in the right direction, compared with 37 per cent in Sweden. In Australia, 59 per cent said the country was on the wrong track. In Sweden, the figure was 63 per cent.
Australia ranked equal 12th among the 30 countries surveyed. Sweden ranked 16th. We recorded higher national confidence than in many Western countries, even as majorities still believed our countries were moving in the wrong direction.
What does “right direction” measure?
Most studies show Australians or Swedes are personally optimistic. Personal optimism asks whether people believe good things will happen in their own lives.
The Ipsos question asks people to judge the movement of their country.
Ipsos calls the measure “Direction of Travel”. It is best understood as national-direction sentiment. It is optimism-adjacent rather than a direct psychological measure of optimism.
Even so, it is a meaningful substitute for asking whether people feel optimistic about their country's future.
The reason is that it asks about movement. Satisfaction asks, “How are things now?” Direction asks, “Where are things going?”
A person who says the country is heading in the right direction is expressing the belief that national conditions are improving or that leaders, institutions, and citizens are moving the country towards a better future. A person who says the country is on the wrong track is expressing concern that current choices and conditions are leading to something worse.
The answer will be influenced by politics, economic conditions, government performance, safety, public services, social cohesion and recent events. It should not be treated as a pure measure of optimism. Yet it captures something central to national optimism: whether people believe their country is moving towards improvement.
This distinction becomes clearer when we compare the national-direction findings with Ipsos’ more direct personal-optimism questions.
In a separate survey, 68 per cent of Swedes agreed with the statement:
“I am optimistic that 2026 will be a better year for me than it was in 2025.”
The Australian result was almost the same, at 66 per cent.
Ipsos also asked whether people in their country would begin to feel more optimistic about the country’s long-term future during 2026. Sweden and Australia produced the same result: 49 per cent agreed, and 51 per cent disagreed.
These surveys were conducted at different times and should not be combined into a formal index. The pattern is nevertheless revealing.
Around two-thirds of Australians and Swedes remained optimistic about their own next year. Fewer than half expected greater optimism about their country’s long-term future. Only 41 per cent of Australians and 37 per cent of Swedes believed their countries were currently heading in the right direction.
People often retain more confidence in the parts of life where they can see relationships, effort, competence and practical choices. Confidence weakens as the question moves further from personal agency and closer to national politics and large systems.
This is confidence close to agency.
It also reveals the optimism gap: personal optimism remains alive while confidence in the shared national story weakens.
People can enjoy good lives, love their families, take pride in their work, trust their neighbours and remain hopeful about their own futures while believing their country is moving in the wrong direction.
Hans Rosling and the picture in our heads
Two of the conversations I had in Sweden turned to the late Swedish physician, academic and statistician Hans Rosling and his book Factfulness.
Rosling, together with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, challenged the widespread belief that almost everything in the world is getting worse.
Their work showed how easily people can develop an overly dramatic picture of the world when bad news arrives without historical context, proportion or an understanding of long-term progress.
Rosling encouraged people to maintain a fact-based worldview and recognise the common ways in which information can be misinterpreted. One of the great misconceptions he sought to correct was the belief that everything is getting worse.
His insight helps us think about the Australian and Swedish results.
Why do most people in two prosperous, democratic and highly capable countries believe their country is heading in the wrong direction?
Most of us are not statisticians. We do not form our judgement by examining long-term statistical series on health, education, safety, income, innovation, employment, infrastructure and institutional performance.
We form an impression from what we experience personally, what we see and hear in the news, and what family, friends and colleagues tell us.
The news performs an essential public function by exposing failure, danger, conflict and injustice. Those stories are important. They are also more likely to become news than the gradual improvements that occur quietly every day.
A violent crime is news. Thousands of peaceful neighbourhood encounters are not.
A failure in a hospital is news. Millions of successful treatments rarely are.
A political scandal is news. The daily work of capable public servants, teachers, nurses, engineers and community leaders receives less attention.
A business closure is visible and immediate. The slow creation of new businesses, technologies, skills and opportunities can be harder to see.
This does not mean public concern is imagined. Australians are living with real pressure around housing, prices and household finances. Swedes have serious concerns about crime, safety, integration and social cohesion.
The task is to hold those realities together with the fuller picture.
Rosling’s lesson was to resist the false choice between complacency and catastrophe. Things can be bad and better. A country can have serious problems and formidable strengths. Progress can be real while further progress remains urgent.
There is also a conversational effect.
What we read and watch becomes what we discuss. Repeated stories of failure, decline and danger move from the news into conversations with family, friends and colleagues. Those conversations can then reinforce the impression that deterioration is everywhere.
The surveys cannot prove that news coverage or everyday conversation causes national pessimism. Rosling nevertheless offers a plausible explanation for how a partial picture becomes the picture people carry in their heads.
National pessimism can become socially infectious.
Optimism can be infectious too. This is why leaders, journalists, researchers and citizens should report failure honestly and make progress visible. People need to know what is improving, why it is improving, what remains difficult and what they can do next.
A fact-based national story should neither conceal problems nor conceal progress.
Why do Australians and Swedes feel this way?
The June Ipsos findings were not one-off results.
Across four Ipsos snapshots spanning 18 months, a majority of Australians and Swedes said their countries were heading in the wrong direction.
In January 2025, 45 per cent of Australians said the country was heading in the right direction. The Swedish result was 27 per cent.
In June 2025, the Australian result remained at 45 per cent, while Sweden had risen to 37 per cent.
In December 2025, 48 per cent of Australians and 29 per cent of Swedes said their countries were heading in the right direction.
By June 2026, Australia stood at 41 per cent and Sweden at 37 per cent.
The precise results move from month to month. The central finding has remained consistent. At every point, fewer than half of Australians and Swedes believed their countries were heading in the right direction.
Other Australian surveys reinforce the finding. SEC Newgate, an Australian research consultancy, tells the same story in its Mood of the Nation surveys. In May 2026, 66 per cent of Australians said the country was heading in the wrong direction, a new high.
The surveys use different samples and methods, so their figures should not be combined into one continuous statistical series. Their broad agreement matters. Australia has been experiencing a sustained national confidence problem rather than one disappointing month of polling.
The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute provides a longer and more direct measure of Australian optimism. Between 2021 and 2025, the proportion of Australians expressing optimism about Australia’s future fell by 12 percentage points. Belief that their own lives would improve over the following three to four years fell by 13 points. High belonging declined by 11 points, life satisfaction fell by 11 points, and agreement that Australia is a land of economic opportunity where hard work brings a better life fell by 13 points. There was a slight recovery in optimism about Australia’s future in 2025, when 59 per cent said they were optimistic about the country’s future. That is higher than the Ipsos right-direction figure, and the difference is instructive. The Scanlon question asks about Australia’s future in broad terms. Ipsos asks respondents to judge the country’s present trajectory. A person may retain an underlying belief in Australia and its future while thinking that its current policies, institutions or leaders are taking it down the wrong path.
The results are not contradictory. Together, they reveal layers of national optimism. Australians can believe in the country’s underlying strengths, remain personally hopeful, and still feel dissatisfied with its present direction.
The Scanlon findings also help explain why confidence has weakened. Financial difficulty increased from 31 per cent of Australians in 2021 to 40 per cent in 2025. Scanlon’s longitudinal analysis found financial stress was the strongest socioeconomic predictor of negative expectations about the future.
In the June Ipsos survey, inflation was the leading Australian concern, selected by 46 per cent of respondents.
This points to the pressure many people feel due to inflation, housing, and household expenses.
Australians may recognise the country’s strengths while wondering whether housing remains attainable, whether energy and essential services remain affordable, whether productivity is improving and whether the next generation will enjoy the opportunities available to earlier generations.
Australia is a good country with a strained mood.
The Swedish pattern has also been developing for some time.
In January 2025, Ipsos reported that crime and violence had been Sweden’s leading public concern for 101 consecutive months, nearly eight and a half years. At that time, 65 per cent of Swedes selected it as one of the country’s major worries.
In June 2026, 55 per cent nominated crime and violence. Twenty per cent selected immigration control and 13 per cent selected the rise of extremism.
These findings point towards persistent anxiety about safety, integration, trust and social cohesion. They do not justify reducing Sweden’s national mood to immigration alone. Crime and violence remained the much stronger concern.
The larger Swedish question appears to be whether the country can preserve safety, fairness, trust and belonging while adapting to changed social conditions.
There is an important counter-signal.
In Ipsos’ 2025 study of nine Western countries, Sweden was the only country where a majority, 65 per cent, said they were satisfied with how democracy was working. More than half also said they were not very worried about the state of Swedish democracy over the following five years.
Swedes can therefore value their democratic system and retain confidence in important institutions while doubting the country’s present direction.
The Swedish result is not evidence that people have rejected Sweden or abandoned democracy. It suggests that many people believe a highly capable country is responding too slowly or ineffectively to the problems they see.
Sweden remains one of the world’s most prosperous, innovative, democratic and highly functioning countries. The gap is between Sweden’s formidable capabilities and people’s confidence that the country is using those capabilities to secure safety, belonging and progress.
Australia and Sweden are good countries with similar optimism gaps. The evidence now appears across different questions, survey organisations and time periods.
Australians worry especially about whether life remains affordable and opportunity remains reachable. Swedes worry especially about whether safety and social cohesion can be secured.
In both countries, personal confidence remains stronger than confidence in the shared national story.
In both, the picture people carry is formed partly by lived experience and partly by the stories they hear and repeat.
India, Singapore and a different national mood
As I arrived home, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Melbourne for the Australia–India Annual Leaders’ Summit.
India recorded a very different Ipsos result.
Sixty-nine per cent of urban Indians surveyed said their country was heading in the right direction, placing India third among the 30 countries. Singapore ranked first at 79 per cent.
India also recorded strong economic confidence, with 75 per cent of urban respondents describing the economy positively. At the same time, Indians continued to identify unemployment, corruption, inequality, crime and inflation as serious concerns. As Ipsos notes, confidence and concern can coexist.
Why do people in some countries believe their society is moving forward, even while facing serious problems, while people in prosperous and capable countries struggle to believe in their national direction?
Part of the answer may lie in whether people can see a convincing story of movement.
India’s national story includes economic growth, new infrastructure, digital capability, enterprise and rising international influence. Singapore’s national story emphasises competence, planning, security and continuing development.
Those countries face real problems. Most people nevertheless see momentum.
France and entrenched national pessimism
At the other end of the table was France.
Only 10 per cent of French respondents said their country was heading in the right direction. Ninety per cent said it was on the wrong track.
This was not a single bad month. France recorded 12 per cent in the right direction in January 2025, 9 per cent in June 2025, and 10 per cent in December 2025. The French result has remained extraordinarily low across changing events and political circumstances.
In Ipsos’ separate predictions survey, 41 per cent of French respondents were optimistic that 2026 would be a better year for them personally. Confidence is strongest around the personal future and weakest around the shared national project.
France retains extraordinary strengths in culture, science, infrastructure, education, industry, public administration and local government. Yet many French people do not see those strengths forming a convincing direction of national improvement.
A capable country still needs a believable direction.
President Tharman and the loss of collective optimism
Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam has described a long drift towards pessimism in many advanced societies.
He distinguishes personal optimism from collective optimism: the belief that people can progress, overcome challenges, find solutions and move forward together.
He warns that when societies lose this shared belief, differences harden and politics increasingly divides people into “us” and “them”.
President Tharman argues that people need institutions and a social culture that strengthen connectedness, respect every person’s effort and contribution, and give people reasons for collective pride.
His analysis helps explain why national optimism matters.
People need more than confidence in their ability to manage their own lives. They need some belief that their country can solve problems, renew institutions, widen opportunity and create a future worth sharing.
Singapore’s high right-direction result should not be treated as proof that every Singaporean policy is right or that every feature of its political system can be transferred elsewhere.
It does suggest that many Singaporeans see a connection between national capability, long-term planning and practical progress.
Australia and Sweden possess remarkable capability too.
The challenge is to connect that capability with what people experience in daily life and with the national story they hear.
What can we do?
I began this essay with my personal experience of Sweden and the warm conversations I had there.
What can we do as individuals?
It is difficult for any one person to reverse a national pessimism that has become well entrenched and appears to be worsening across much of the developed world. Yet the leader looks like the person in your mirror. Each of us can influence the mood of the families, workplaces and communities around us.
We can ask better questions.
What was the best thing that happened in your day?
What makes you optimistic?
What gives you confidence about the future?
What would national progress look like to you?
What is already improving, and what should we build upon?
We can listen seriously to people’s concerns and also share our own visions of national growth, renewal and possibility. We can draw attention to the people solving problems, the institutions that are working, the communities becoming stronger and the progress that deserves to be better known.
We do not need to pretend that everything is going well. We can help one another hold the full picture: what is difficult, what is improving, what is possible and what we can do next.
National confidence is built through millions of daily conversations and actions. Each of us can contribute a little realistic and infectious optimism in our own world.
The next wise step may be as simple as asking someone today:
“What makes you optimistic about the future of our country?”