Are Americans confident in their institutions? New poll breaks 46-year record
Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions remains near a record low, according to the latest Gallup poll — though significant partisan differences exist.
Democrats’ trust has plunged to its lowest level ever recorded, while, in contrast, Republican confidence has risen markedly.
The survey, which has been conducted since 1979, asked respondents about their faith in nine key institutions: organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, banks, public schools, newspapers, Congress, organized labor, and big business.
Here is a breakdown of the results:
Near-record low confidence
Overall, 28% of Americans expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in these nine institutions.
This figure is unchanged from last year and up slightly from 26% in 2023, marking the fourth consecutive year with an average below 30%
In 1979, by comparison, 48% of Americans said they had substantial faith in these institutions, with the share trending downward ever since.
The poll also asked about nine other institutions — including police, the medical system and science — bringing the total to 18. Of those 18, just three received majority-level confidence: small business (70%), the military (62%) and science (61%).
Record partisan gap
The survey — which sampled 1,402 adults June 2-26 — also revealed that Democrats’ confidence in the nine key institutions fell to a record low of 26% in 2025, down 5 percentage points from last year.
Meanwhile, Republican confidence rebounded sharply, rising from 28% to 37% — the highest figure for the GOP since 2020.
As a result of these divergent trends, there now exists an 11-point gap in confidence between the two major parties — the largest since Gallup began regular tracking 46 years ago.
Prior to this, the largest partisan divide was measured in 2007, near the end of then President George W. Bush’s second term. In that year, 40% of Republicans expressed a significant amount of confidence, while 31% of Democrats said the same.
The results underscore the degree to which institutional confidence is closely linked to the outcome of presidential elections, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
“This suggests that confidence in U.S. institutions may be less about how well the institution performs its societal functions and more about who has the power to influence what the institution can do,” Gallup concluded.
This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Are Americans confident in their institutions? New poll breaks 46-year record."