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About three quarters of US voters have a negative assessment of the current state of affairs in the USA. This is according to the first results of CNN's national polling in this year's presidential election.

Only about a quarter describe themselves as enthusiastic or satisfied with the state of the nation, with more than 4 in 10 dissatisfied and about 3 in 10 saying they are angry.

But voters remain generally optimistic: More than six in 10 say America's best days are in the future, and only about a third say they are in the past. President Joe Biden's approval rating is below average nationally: About four in 10 voters say they approve of his job performance, while the majority disapprove.

More about the exit surveys: CNN's election polls for the 2024 general election include interviews with thousands of voters, both those who voted on Election Day and those who voted early or by mail.

This scope makes them a powerful tool for understanding the demographic profile and political views of voters in this year's election. And their results are ultimately compared to the ultimate benchmark: the results of the elections themselves.

However, exit polls are still polls with margins of error – meaning they are most useful when treated as estimates rather than precise measurements. This is particularly true for the earliest poll results, which have not yet been adjusted to reflect the final election results.

CNN exit polls are a combination of in-person interviews with voters on Election Day and in-person interviews, as well as telephone and online surveys, measuring the views of early and absentee voters.

They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. In-person interviews on election day were conducted in a random sample of 279 polling stations.

The results also include interviews with early and mail-in voters conducted in person at 27 early voting locations, by telephone or online between October 24 and November 2. The results for the entire sample of 16,604 respondents have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points; It is larger for subgroups.