A plurality of Americans have less trust in the government following the 2024 presidential election, with significant gaps between Democrats and Republicans, according to a Graduate School of Political Management poll released last month.
The poll, in partnership with New York-based consulting firm Schoen Cooperman Research, surveyed 800 American adults in November and found 39 percent of Americans said they have less trust in the government following the 2024 election. Lesley Lopez, an organizer of the poll and the director of the public relations and communications program at GSPM, said the results confirmed that people’s perceptions of the government and mainstream media are divided along demographic and partisan lines.
“This is our third installment of the trust in government poll and given the tensions around this very divisive election season, it made for the perfect topic to explore and examine,” Lopez said in an email.
The poll showed a gap in government trust between political parties and genders, with 61 percent of Democrats saying they have less trust in the government after the election and 58 percent of Republicans saying they have more trust in the government postelection. Only 17 percent of Democrats said their trust in government increased following the election and only 16 percent of Republicans said their trust decreased postelection.
Additionally, 43 percent of women said they have less trust in the government after the election, while 32 percent said they have more trust. About 37 percent of men said they have more trust in the government after the election, while 34 percent said they have less trust, according to the poll.
The poll also found that 69 percent of respondents felt online misinformation hindered their ability to access accurate news about the election during the campaign. About 45 percent of respondents said they did not trust the government or news organizations to give them fair and accurate information, according to the poll’s results.
The poll showed that Democrats were more likely to trust news organizations than Republicans, with 28 percent of Democratic respondents saying they trust news organizations to provide fair and accurate information over the government, compared to only 15 percent of Republican respondents.
“Biggest takeaway is that we have confirmation of suspicions about just how divided the media consumption landscape is,” Lopez said.
The poll also found that the majority of surveyed adults under 40 rely on social media to get their news instead of traditional news sources. The poll found 18-29 year olds are more likely to get their news from platforms like TikTok and Instagram, while older groups are more likely to use Facebook for their daily news intake.
Political scientists said the results are a piece of a trend dating back to the 1960s showing declining trust in the government and media, which they said in recent years has increasingly split among party lines.
Robert Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, said the decline of trust among Democrats shows that they feel the election of former President Donald Trump means government institutions have failed them after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. He said the postelection increase in trust among Republicans and men shows that the demographics that supported Trump on the presidential ticket are now more confident that the government will be effective under his incoming administration.
“The reaction that a political figure who incited a riot on January 6, 2021, could be elected president, is suggestive that our institutions have failed them,” Shapiro said. “And that’s how those people probably viewed it and also genuine disgust with Trump.”
Shapiro said the declining trust in government is part of a trend that started during the Vietnam War — when the government falsely insisted the war would be quick — and has only worsened with increased partisanship. He said the poll shows that people are dissatisfied with the performance of the government, and government officials can improve it by bettering the quality of life in America through economic policies and enhanced messaging of those policies.
“If things turn around in the economy in particular, I think people will start to feel better in general and that will be reflected in their attitudes concerning government institutions,” Shapiro said. “So it’s really based on the performance of political leaders in government.”
Shapiro said the root of public distrust in the media comes from a focus on conflict and polarization in news organizations, which ties people’s personal beliefs to news stories and causes them to distrust outlets that report on issues they do not agree with.
“A lot of the distrust may have to do with the fact that in the media, you’ve really got the amplification of conflict in a way that really is really quite stunning,” Shapiro said. “And people are just basically tired of the perpetual, ongoing conflict conveyed and amplified with the media.”
Shapiro said the advent of more people turning to social media for news can lead to an electorate that is gaining access to lower quality information due to the lack of comprehensive analysis and shorter format of online news, which will likely affect their voting patterns and decision-making.
“If they’re not getting good quality information, the kinds of decisions they can make may be less good than they would otherwise be if they had better information,” Shapiro said.
Stephen Craig, a professor of political science at University of Florida, said higher performance of government officials and economic conditions can help with trust in the government, but there has been a trend since the Watergate scandal of viewing government officials as corrupt, a belief that cannot easily be solved by improving performance.
“The public has lost trust in government for both reasons, that government has not done a particularly good job of solving our biggest problems,” Craig said. “And secondly because more and more people believe that decision makers are out for themselves, their own benefit, their own political career.”
Craig said misinformation’s impact on public trust is likely to only get worse as social media platforms, like Meta, decrease their fact-checking efforts and with the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence. He said partisanship also plays a role because some people perceive information that they don’t agree with as misinformation because it is not what they want to hear.
“It’s getting increasingly more difficult for people to get the facts unless they really work to get them, and even then, they may not trust the source,” Craig said.