Gallup's 141-country survey finds the U.S. has one of the widest generational optimism gaps on earth: only five other countries show a double-digit split between younger pessimism and older confidence. Everywhere else, young people are either more optimistic than their elders or roughly aligned with them. For 2026 midterm strategists, that's a structural opening — affordability and economic anxiety among under-35 voters is not a vibe, it's a measurable cross-national outlier — but only for candidates who show up with a concrete economic argument, not generational sympathy talk.