Confidence in major U.S. institutions such as the government, media, law enforcement, and Big Tech is at a record low and has not improved at all since 2021, a new report from Gallup found.
Of the 16 institutions Gallup measured Americans’ confidence in, “Congress” ranked the worst, with only 7 percent of those surveyed claiming they trusted the legislative body. That’s a 5-point drop since Gallup’s 2021 poll.
“The presidency” and “the U.S. Supreme Court” also lost a noteworthy amount of Americans’ trust since last year. While the presidency clocked 38 percent confidence last year and SCOTUS received 36 percent, both branches of government dropped into the low- to mid-20s in 2022.
Specifically, the court had a 25 percent vote of confidence with Americans before the Dobbs v. Jackson decision was released, and the presidency held 23 percent of Americans’ trust. That’s even lower than President Joe Biden’s current 38 percent approval rating.
Other institutions such as church or organized religion (31 percent), the criminal justice system (14 percent), big business (14 percent), newspapers (16 percent), and police (45 percent) marked their lowest votes of confidence since the 1990s, according to Gallup.
Americans have also significantly lost trust in the media. Only 11 percent of those surveyed said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in “television news.” That confidence goes up to 16 percent with newspapers but, much like the TV news category, is still down 5 points from just last year.
Trust in the media is drastically split along partisan lines. While only 8 percent of Republicans and 8 percent of independents say they still have faith in TV news, 20 percent of Democrats reported confidence in broadcast media. When it comes to newspapers, only 5 percent of Republicans and 12 percent of independents say they have confidence, compared to 35 percent of Democrats.
Only small businesses and the U.S. military seem to have captured more than 50 percent of Americans’ vote of confidence.