WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ trust in various U.S. federal government institutions remains mired near five-decade lows. Forty-five percent of U.S. adults have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle international problems, and 38% trust the government to handle domestic problems. Trust in the three branches of the federal government ranges from 32% for the legislative branch to 49% for the judicial branch.
Two decades ago, all five measures showed trust above the majority level, and as recently as 2012, majorities trusted all but the legislative branch.
These trust figures, measured in Gallup’s Sept. 2-16 Governance poll, are statistically similar to what they were a year ago. However, that overall stability masks large partisan shifts. Republican confidence on all five trust items has increased sharply, most dramatically for the executive branch (up 83 percentage points) and the government’s ability to handle international problems (up 64 points) and domestic problems (up 57 points). Meanwhile, Democrats’ trust has tumbled on these same three measures by 56 to 78 points and is also down significantly for the legislative branch.
Political independents’ trust has not changed meaningfully in the past year. In both 2024 and 2025, their trust has been closer to that of the “out-party” (Republicans in 2024, Democrats in 2025) than the incumbent party.
These wide gaps in government trust among partisans help explain the long-term declines in overall public trust. Supporters of the incumbent president’s party or “in-party” — Republicans when a Republican president is in the White House and Democrats when a Democratic president is — continue to express high levels of trust in the government. However, in recent decades, trust has collapsed among those opposed to the president’s party or the “out-party” — Democrats when a Republican is in office and Republicans when a Democrat is.
These changes in partisans’ trust in government are in addition to a steady decline in trust among independents, who generally do not have a high degree of faith in either party to run the government.
Average trust in the five federal government branches or policy areas has declined by 35 points since the 1970s among out-party identifiers. At the same time, average trust among political independents is down 26 points.
Those figures compare with an average six-point decline among those who identify with the in-party. While this group has much less trust today than in the 1970s in the judicial and legislative branches, and slightly less trust in the federal government to handle international problems, they are now more likely to express trust in the executive branch than in the past and are just as likely to trust the federal government to handle domestic problems.
As such, it is not so much that trust in the government has vanished as that it has become contingent on which party controls the government. Previously, trust was once rooted in government institutions themselves and often rose above partisan divides. Today, institutions are trusted only when controlled by one’s preferred political party.
Gallup first measured Americans’ trust in the federal government from 1972 through 1976 and then from 1997 to the present. In the 1970s, an average of 64% of U.S. adults who identified with the opposition party to the president had trust in the federal government to handle international problems. This decade, the average has declined to 20%, with most of that change occurring since the 2000s.
When it comes to handling domestic problems, 54% of the president’s opponents trusted the federal government in the 1970s, compared with 18% today. And trust in the executive branch among the incumbent president’s opponents has dropped from 49% to 7%.
The decline in trust extends to the other federal government branches. Trust in the legislative branch has fallen about 40 points since the 1970s among the president’s political opposition, while there has been a 13-point drop in trust in the judicial branch among this group.
Today, trust in the government to handle both domestic and international problems among supporters of the president’s party does not look much different than it did 50 years ago. In fact, trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems, which has averaged 71% this decade, is nearly identical to what it was in the 1970s, when it averaged 70%. Trust in the government’s ability to handle international problems is down slightly compared with the 1970s, from 82% to 76%.
Trust in the executive branch is higher now (87% vs. 75%) among in-party supporters, though some of the 1970s polling occurred during the Watergate era, which likely suppressed the average for the decade. Trust in the executive branch among the incumbent president’s supporters is similar to what it was in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, when it ranged between 85% and 91%.
The president’s political allies are less trusting of the judicial and legislative branches today than in the past. Supporters of the incumbent president had maintained relatively high trust in the legislative branch through the 2000s and in the judicial branch through the 2010s. The recent decline in trust in the judicial branch among the president’s supporters largely reflects lower ratings during Joe Biden’s Democratic presidency, when a solidly conservative Supreme Court issued several prominent conservative rulings — most notably, the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protection of abortion rights.
The steep declines in trust among out-party supporters and relative stability among in-party supporters have led to increasingly large party gaps on these measures, particularly for the executive branch. In the 1970s, trust in the executive branch differed by an average of 26 points between Republicans and Democrats. This decade, the average party gap has expanded to 80 points, including an 88-point gap between Republicans (92%) and Democrats (4%) who trust the executive branch in this year’s survey.
Party gaps in trust in the government’s ability to handle international and domestic problems are not nearly as large — averaging 57 and 53 points, respectively, this decade — but have about tripled since the 1970s. There are more modest party gaps in trust in the legislative and judicial branches, as those are less closely tied to the incumbent president.
Declining trust among political independents is another reason why trust in government is lower today than in the past. The percentage of independents with a great deal or fair amount of trust in the federal government has declined by more than 20 points for each branch or policy area since the 1970s.
Independents’ average trust levels this decade are mostly in the 30% to 40% range, except for the judicial branch, at 50%. While generally low in an absolute sense, independents’ trust levels in the executive branch and in the government’s ability to handle international and domestic problems are higher than those for the out-party. In the 1970s, independents and opposition-party supporters generally had similar levels of trust.
In contrast to depressed federal government trust, solid majorities of Americans continue to express trust in their state and local governments. Currently, 59% of Americans trust their state government to handle state problems, and 65% trust their local government to handle local problems. These figures are similar to the averages for the past decade — and for local government, largely in line with what Gallup measured in the 1970s. Average trust in state government has declined by 12 points since then, less than is seen for the five federal government branches or policy areas.
The partisanship effects that have led to declines in federal government trust are muted when Americans evaluate their state and local governments. Many local governments are nonpartisan, and they often deal with issues that are less politically divisive than the federal government does.
While state governments are more visibly partisan than local governments, Republican-led and Democratic-led states in the U.S. largely offset each other when averaging the views of Americans across all 50 states. Those partisan effects would likely be apparent if looking at individual states — Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas likely trust their state government much more than Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas do. However, such an analysis is not possible with these Gallup data, given the small sample sizes in any individual state.
Nationally, party gaps in trust in state and local governments are about the same as or only slightly larger than in the past. This is evident when comparing trust among Republicans and Democrats, rather than the sitting president’s party versus the opposition party, given the differences in political dynamics between national and subnational government institutions.
This year, 68% of Democrats, 62% of Republicans and 53% of independents trust their state government. The party gaps are larger for local government — 18 points, compared with six points for state government — with 79% of Democrats, 61% of Republicans and 62% of independents expressing trust in their local government. Last year, the gap in local government trust was smaller, at seven points (74% among Democrats vs. 67% among Republicans). The larger gap this year may partly be a reaction to some local governments’ opposition to Trump administration policies.
Gallup’s annual Governance survey also measures trust in key actors with significant roles in the democratic process, including politicians, the news media and the American people.
Currently, 53% of U.S. adults (by one point, the lowest Gallup has measured) have trust in the American people to make judgments under the democratic system on issues facing the country. Forty-one percent trust the men and women who hold or are running for public office, and 28% — a new low — trust the news media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
Similar to the trends for federal government institutions, trust in all three of these political actors has declined precipitously in recent decades. Average trust in the news media thus far in the current decade is 36 points lower than in the 1970s; trust in the American people is 30 points lower, and trust in politicians has dropped by 23 points.
Trust in these three political actors is less influenced by which party is in power at a given moment. Party trends indicate the following:
The level of trust that Americans have in the government and the nature of that trust have been transformed over the past 50 years, especially in the past two decades. Far fewer Americans trust the federal government today than in the past, and those changes are driven in large part by the collapse of trust among people who are not aligned with the party of the sitting president.
In the past, opponents of the president’s party still expressed modest degrees of trust in the government, perhaps because they respected the institution itself and the structure, norms and laws that supported it. Today, government “trust” seems to be largely determined by Americans’ inherent mistrust of people who have a different political philosophy from their own — a broader societal trend that may prove difficult to reverse but is critical to restoring trust in government institutions.
