Most Americans feel pessimistic about the state of their nation—74 percent, according to the annual Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) American Values Survey released Tuesday. And most (61 percent) feel neither party represents their views—compared to 48 percent who said the same in 1990.

The panel of experts who parsed the new survey data at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday morning took care to remind us in the audience that we weren’t ourselves a representative collage of real Americans. They’re folks most of us will only ever encounter in data sets.