This is NO Surprise: Survey Finds HUGE Drop in American’s Confidence in Government

12 Mar, 2015 by Warner Todd Huston

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A survey of how Americans feel about government finds that the public has almost no confidence in any branch of government. Neither the courts, nor the Presidency, nor Congress have much support according to the survey. This survey has been taken every year for 40 years, so it has a long history of findings.

Congress is in such disdain that it is in single digits while the president isn’t too much better. The Supreme Court is also in low esteem in this survey.

The 2014 General Social Survey finds only 23 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the Supreme Court, 11 percent in the executive branch and 5 percent in Congress. By contrast, half have a great deal of confidence in the military.

The survey is conducted by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. Because of its long-running and comprehensive set of questions about the public, it is a highly regarded source of data about social trends. Data from the 2014 survey was released last week, and an analysis of its findings on confidence in institutions was conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the General Social Survey.

The survey found these five things:

• A drop in support for the presidency, especially with Republicans
• Confidence in the Supreme Court is dropping across party lines
• Congress is failing miserably
• People hate the media, too
• Banks and financial institutions also held in low opinion

Maybe the surprise isn’t that the numbers are so low…. but that they are that high!