People’s confidence in U.S. institutions fell to a new low in the latest Gallup polling, released Thursday.
Among respondents to the latest annual survey, an average of 26% expressed confidence in nine institutions the polling company has tracked since 1979: organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, banks, public schools, newspapers, Congress, organized labor and big business. That’s down from the previous low of 27% last year and from 36% in 2020.
The share of those expressing confidence in public schools (26%) and big business (14%) fell to new lows — as did the level of confidence in the police (43%) and large technology companies (26%), which Gallup started tracking in more recent decades. Overall, the annual poll looked at 15 institutions this year.
“Confidence has generally trended downward since registering 48% in 1979 and holding near 45% in the 1980s,” Gallup said. “It averaged closer to 40% in the 1990s and early 2000s before dropping to the low 30% range in the 2010s. Last year was the first time it fell below 30%.”
The only institutions that earned the trust of most adults in this year’s poll were small businesses (65%) and the military (60%).
According to Gallup, the decline has come amid a deepening partisan mistrust of institutions, with Republicans and Democrats disagreeing sharply on seven institutions.
This year, Democrats were more likely by 39 percentage points than Republicans to express trust in the Democrat-controlled presidency and 34 percentage points more likely to trust the public schools. Democrats also voiced “substantially more confidence” in organized labor and newspapers, Gallup noted.
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans were more likely by 28 percentage points than Democrats to be confident about the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. They were also 24 points more likely to have faith in the church or organized religion and 20 points more likely to trust the police.
Independents surveyed were closer to Democrats on religion and the police and “halfway between the two groups on the other polarizing institutions,” Gallup noted.
Gallup conducted a randomized national telephone survey of 1,013 adults on June 1-22. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.