A majority of voters nationwide said that the United States is on the wrong track as they cast their votes today in the 2018 midterm elections, according to early results from the NBC News Exit Poll. By contrast, about four in 10 voters think that things are generally going in the right direction.

This is the seventh national election in a row in which a majority of voters said that the U.S. was on the wrong track. For the past 14 years, Americans’ sour mood about the nation’s direction has held whether the White House and Congress were controlled by Democrats or Republicans.

The last time a plurality of voters expressed optimism about the nation’s trajectory was President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, when the Exit Poll found “right direction” leading “wrong track” by 50 percent to 47 percent. 

Not surprisingly, the exit poll reveals a sharp red-blue divide on this question today, with four out of five Democrats saying that the nation is on the wrong track, while about three-quarters of Republicans believe that things are going in the right direction.