Gallup: Confidence in US institutions remains near all-time low

Americans’ confidence in the nation’s major institutions remains near a historic low, with an average of just 27% expressing a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in 14 core public and private institutions, according to a Gallup report released July 14. 

The figure, based on a June 1-15 survey, is one percentage point above the record low set in 2023 and marks the fifth consecutive year in which average confidence has remained below 30%.

Confidence averaged between 40% and 50% during much of the 1980s and 1990s. It fell into the low 30s in 2007 and has remained largely in the high 20s or low 30s since then, except for a brief increase to 36% in 2020, Gallup said.

Gallup said the long-term decline has not been gradual but has occurred through several sharp drops. Confidence fell in the early 1980s and early 1990s before partially recovering, then declined more persistently beginning in the mid-2000s as the Great Recession approached. It briefly improved in 2020, before falling to 27% in 2022.

Twelve of the 14 institutions Gallup has measured annually since 1993 are at or near their lowest confidence ratings on record. Banks, at 28%, and organized labor, at 26%, were the only exceptions, with both standing seven percentage points above their respective record lows.

Congress ranked last, with 9% of Americans expressing confidence in the institution. Television news received 14%, while newspapers, big business, and the criminal justice system each received 17%.

Confidence stood at 27% for both the presidency and the Supreme Court. Public schools also received a 27% confidence rating, followed by the medical system at 28%, the church or organized religion at 33%, and the police at 45%.

Small business recorded the highest confidence level among all the institutions included in the survey, at 67%, followed by the military at 61%. 

Confidence in large technology companies fell to a new low of 20%, down from 24% in 2025 and 32% when Gallup first measured the sector in 2020. Forty-one percent of Americans now say they have little or no confidence in large technology companies, up from 32% in 2025.

The poll also found that the partisan gap in institutional confidence reached a record high during President Donald Trump’s second term. Across the nine institutions Gallup has measured consistently since 1979, Republicans expressed an average of 13 percentage points more confidence than Democrats, up from an 11-point gap in 2025. Gallup attributed the widening divide to rising confidence among Republicans and declining confidence among Democrats following the change in presidential administrations.

The largest partisan divide involved the presidency, with a 70-point gap between Republicans and Democrats. The gap stood at 46 points for the military, 45 points for the police, and 40 points for both the Supreme Court and the church or organized religion.

Gallup said institutional confidence increasingly depends on which political party controls the government rather than on broadly shared trust in major civic, social, and political institutions.

The polling organization attributed the long-term decline to several developments, including economic pressures, the Iraq War, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, backlash against COVID-19 policies, clergy sexual abuse scandals, declining religiosity, and growing political polarization. Gallup said continuing concerns about affordability could also be contributing to low confidence.

Although confidence has recovered after previous downturns, Gallup noted that those rebounds have rarely restored trust to its earlier levels. As a result, each major decline has tended to leave institutional confidence lower than before.