Top image: Silicon Valley, looking south toward downtown San José, in 2014. Photo: Coolcaesar / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Two weeks before an election crowded with tax measures, Silicon Valley’s most closely watched temperature check says residents are anxious, financially stretched and increasingly skeptical of the industry that built the region.

The 2026 Silicon Valley Poll, a survey of 1,801 adults across five Bay Area counties conducted by Joint Venture Silicon Valley with the Bay Area News Group, found that 60% of residents say the region is on the wrong track, up from 53% last year, according to Joint Venture’s release. Forty percent say it is headed in the right direction, down from 47% in 2025 but well above the 29% recorded in 2023.

“For the first time, here’s a survey saying, ‘No, that has all fizzled,’” Joint Venture President and CEO Russell Hancock told the Mountain View Voice, describing what residents now think of the Valley as a place where hard work pays off. “I think that’s hugely significant. It’s the thing that made us, and now it’s not there – or some people think.”

Quality of life, by the numbers

Housing and affordability dwarf every other concern. Joint Venture’s release puts the share of residents calling them serious issues at 95%; Hancock cited 94% in his interview. “In the poll business, that’s the equivalent of unanimity,” he told the Voice. “George Washington was not elected by 94%.”

The strain shows up in household budgets. Nearly half of residents struggle to cover monthly expenses and save, the release says; 59% have cut back on groceries, 47% have taken on debt and 43% have skipped or delayed medical care. Among families earning under $150,000, 83% have cut back on groceries or other necessities. Financial insecurity was higher for Black (63%) and Hispanic or Latino (58%) residents than for white (46%) or Asian (42%) residents, the Voice reported.

Fifty-seven percent say quality of life has deteriorated, and 46% say they are likely to move out of the region. Cost is the top reason residents give for delaying or not having children, and 79% say the Bay Area is becoming a place where only the wealthy can thrive. Fifty-three percent say it takes more than hard work to build a good life here.

A turn against tech, from the inside

The poll’s sharpest finding may be about the industry itself. Seventy-seven percent of residents say leading tech companies have too much power and influence, including 69% of tech employees, and 73% say those companies have lost their moral compass, according to the Voice. “To me, that’s a screaming headline,” Hancock said. “I couldn’t imagine that a generation ago.”

Residents use artificial intelligence heavily, with 51% using it daily or more often, but are wary of it: 65% say it is moving too quickly and 78% are concerned it will widen economic inequality, according to the release.

What it says about Nov. 3

The survey also tested two measures on the ballot. Forty-eight percent favored the regional transit sales tax, Measure RTM, while 34% opposed it and 18% were unsure, the Voice reported, with support highest among Gen Z respondents (69%) and lowest among Baby Boomers and older (40%). (Our explainer on Measure RTM covers how it would work in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.)

On taxing the wealthy, the two public accounts describe the 63% figure differently. Joint Venture’s release says 63% of likely voters support higher taxes on California’s richest residents “at cutoffs much lower than $1 billion in wealth”; the Voice reported 63% support for the proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaires. We could not reconcile the two descriptions from the published materials.

The long view

The paradox in the data is that residents remain upbeat about themselves: 81% told pollsters their own lives are headed in the right direction, the Voice reported, and 51% still believe the region’s best days are ahead, driven by Gen Z (66%) and Millennials (53%). What has eroded is confidence in the collective deal, the idea that the Valley’s growth lifts the people who live in it.

That shift has consequences beyond sentiment. It shapes how voters treat sales taxes for transit, wealth taxes, local bonds and the tech industry’s growing role in campaigns. For Valley leaders, the challenge is that a younger generation still believes in the place more than its elders do. Whether that optimism survives may depend less on the next product cycle than on whether housing, child care and transit become attainable for the people who still want to stay.

Sources

• Affordability Challenges Loom Large in 2026 Silicon Valley Poll, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, Oct. 5, 2026
• Joint Venture survey shows optimism has ‘fizzled’ in Silicon Valley, Mountain View Voice, Oct. 15, 2026