Gallup: Who Do You Trust? Depends On Your Politics

Regular readers know I like to write about what interests me most, especially in this Blog, and today is no exception. Last week, we got the results from Gallup’s annual survey ranking Americans’ confidence in some of our most important institutions – including the police, the church/religion, labor unions, public schools, TV and newspapers and even Congress and the presidency.

Most interesting: Gallup separates the responses by political party – Republicans versus Democrats. To this end, Gallup notes that the party whose president is in the White House (in this case Democrats) tends to be more confident about things than the party out of power (in this case Republicans). Let’s start with some highlights.

Now let’s look at the actual numbers from the latest Gallup survey earlier this month.

So, What Do These Latest Gallup Survey Results Tell Us?

Aside from the obvious, the results which stick out the most are the fact that public confidence in Congress is at rock-bottom levels in both political parties (nothing new, of course). Confidence in the presidency is extremely low among Republicans, although as pointed out above, this is usually normal for the party out of power.

Confidence in the mainstream media (TV & newspapers) is extremely low, especially among Republicans. Public trust of institutions among both parties has been slipping in recent years – no surprise there. While confidence regarding small businesses in general is high among both parties, overall trust in big business is very low across the political divide.

Confidence in the police is extremely lopsided. Unfortunately, “defund the police” efforts continue to be supported by many Democrats, but this movement is rapidly dying down as violent crime rates have skyrocketed across the country in the last year. Fortunately, support for our military remains firm in both parties.

In 2020, confidence in several specific institutions increased as the nation dealt with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. These include some of the business and societal sectors most affected by the public health and financial effects of the coronavirus situation, including the medical system, public schools, small business, organized religion and banks.

This year, these same five institutions show the greatest decreases in confidence. However, they all are perceived at least slightly better than they were in 2019 before the pandemic. In particular, confidence in the medical system is substantially higher now (44%) than it was two years ago (36%).

Confidence in the US Supreme Court and the criminal justice system are each down four points since 2020 and remain below their 2019 levels. Meanwhile, decreases since last year in Americans’ confidence in eight other institutions are not statistically significant. These include the military, technology companies, organized labor, newspapers, television news, the presidency, big business and Congress.

In addition to big business, the police was the only other institution which saw a drop in confidence between 2019 and 2020. Since then, confidence in the police has edged up three points, to a slim 51% majority.

The police are one of just three institutions in which a majority of Americans express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence. The other two – small business and the military – have consistently ranked at the top of the list since 1989.

At the other end of the spectrum are Congress, television news, big business, the criminal justice system and newspapers, each of which has a confidence rating at or below 21%. Congress or big business has ranked at the bottom of the list since 2007.

The other eight institutions earn middling confidence ratings from the public, ranging from 28% for organized labor to 44% for the medical system.

Those are the highlights of this year’s Gallup survey of Americans’ confidence in our key social institutions. It continues to amaze me how divergent opinions are among Republicans and Democrats, but that’s nothing new. I hope you found these survey results interesting.

 

One Response to Gallup: Who Do You Trust? Depends On Your Politics

  1. I want to sign in for a subscription but I can’t because when I click to enter the code, the drop down for my email comes up