The Institutions Americans Trust Most And Least

In just a couple of days it will be two years since the January 6 United States Capitol attack. At this time, and as we enter a new year, it feels apt to take a step back to try and capture an overview of the state of trust in institutions in the United States.

The following chart shows data collected by Gallup in June 2023. Of the institutions selected, only the military and small businesses saw a great deal or a fair amount of trust in them from a majority of U.S. respondents. This is at odds with Congress, which saw only 8 percent of people say they had trust in the political institution.

Gallup has been asking this question on trust since 1973. Over the past 50 years, there have been significant fluctuations in responses. For instance, the police saw an all-time low level of trust in 2023, with just 43 percent of respondents saying they had a great deal/quite a lot of trust in them. But three other institutions hit their lowest levels of trust last year too, including public schools with 26 percent (on par with 2014), large tech companies with 26 percent (on par with 2022) and big business with 14 percent (on par with 2022).

In 2022, public confidence declined in 11 out of the 16 institutions tracked by Gallup, with trust in the Supreme Court falling by 11 percentage points to 25 percent, and in the presidency by 15 percentage points to 23 percent. These hardly improved in 2023, rising to just 27 percent and 26 percent, respectively. However, these figures could well have changed by now as analysts at Gallup note: “the survey was conducted June 1-22, 2023, before the Supreme Court issued decisions affecting affirmative action in education, college loan forgiveness and LGBTQ+ Americans’ access to creative services.”