PAWTUCKET, R.I. — A large majority of Americans say they are pessimistic about the state of the country and few expect things will get better in the year ahead, according to a poll released Tuesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A week before President Donald Trump delivers his assessment of the nation in a State of the Union speech to Congress delayed by a record-setting government shutdown, the survey found just 28 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.

Meanwhile, 70 percent say America is headed the wrong way. That’s up from 59 percent in December, with the percentage of those saying the country is on the wrong track now at its highest point in about a year.

A majority of Americans, 52 percent, also believe things are going to get worse over the next year.

While Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to feel negative about the direction of the country, even Republican pessimism is on the rise. The poll found 55 percent of Republicans and just 9 percent of Democrats think the country is headed in the right direction. A month ago, 69 percent of Republicans and 16 percent of Democrats said the same.

Jim Wadkowski, an 80-year-old self-described conservative from Fountain, Colo., said he approves of the job Trump is doing but sees the nation going the wrong way.

“All they do is fight. If one party thinks it’s good, the other thinks it’s bad. If the president thinks it’s good, the party opposed to him thinks it’s bad,” he said of the nation’s leaders. “They don’t do anything for the people.”

The poll of 1,062 adults was conducted Jan. 16 to 20 during the shutdown, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population.