Public Trust in Government: 1958-2023

Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to near record lows following a modest uptick in 2020 and 2021. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. Last year, 20% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.

When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Trust in government began eroding during the 1960s, amid the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the decline continued in the 1970s with the Watergate scandal and worsening economic struggles. Confidence in government recovered in the mid-1980s before falling again in the mid-1990s. But as the economy grew in the late 1990s, so too did confidence in government. Public trust reached a three-decade high shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks but declined quickly thereafter. Since 2007, the shares saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30%.

Today, 25% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they trust the federal government just about always or most of the time, compared with 8% of Republicans and Republican leaners. Democrats report slightly less trust in the federal government today than a  year ago; Republicans’ views have been relatively unchanged over this period.

Since the 1970s, trust in government has been consistently higher among members of the party that controls the White House than among the opposition party. Republicans have often been more reactive than Democrats to changes in political leadership, with Republicans expressing much lower levels of trust during Democratic presidencies; Democrats’ attitudes have tended to be somewhat more consistent, regardless of which party controls the White House. However, the GOP and Democratic shifts in attitudes from the end of Donald Trump’s presidency to the start of Joe Biden’s were roughly the same magnitude.

Among Asian, Hispanic and Black adults, 23%, 23% and 21% respectively say they trust the federal government “most of the time” or “just about always” – higher levels of trust than among White adults (13%). During the last Democratic administration, Black and Hispanic adults similarly expressed more trust in government than White adults. Throughout most recent Republican administrations, White Americans were substantially more likely than Black Americans to express trust in the federal government to do the right thing.

Sources: Pew Research Center, National Election Studies, Gallup, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, and CNN Polls. Data from 2020 and later come from Pew Research Center’s online American Trends Panel; prior data from telephone surveys. Question wording can be found here. See 2020 report for more details on changes in survey mode. More information on the Center’s polling methodology can be found here. For party and race/ethnicity analysis, selected datasets obtained from searches of the iPOLL Databank provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. White, Black and Asian American adults include those who report being one race and are not Hispanic. Hispanics are of any race. Estimates for Asian adults are representative of English speakers only.