In a post at RealClearPolitics members of The 50-State Survey Consortium Team remark on the results of a 50 state poll they have taken to measure the public’s trust of various institutions:
The latest wave of our ongoing 50-state survey, conducted June 12-28 by the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, finds an average decline of almost 10 percentage points since April in public approval of their governors’ handling of the COVID outbreak. Only in five states — Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, South Dakota and Vermont — have governors’ approval ratings increased over this period.
These declines track similar movement in public support for President Trump’s handling of the pandemic. The average 8.2-point decline since April for the president is all the more significant given his far lower starting point. Back in April, 64% of the public, on average, approved of their state governor’s handling of the pandemic. The corresponding figure for Trump was 42%.
To some extent, these patterns likely result from growing public frustration with the resurgence of the pandemic and resulting return to (recommended or required) behavioral restrictions in an increasing number of states, combined with continuing widespread economic hardships.
We see similar downward trends in public trust across all 14 institutions we asked about, including public ones (the CDC, Congress, White House, police, city government, state government) and private (banks, social media and pharmaceutical companies, news media), as well as public health experts (hospitals and doctors, scientists and researchers) and political leaders (Trump, Biden). The largest losses of faith were reserved for the public institutions responsible for public safety and the nation’s pandemic response, such as the police (-14 points), Congress and state governments (-9 points each), and the White House (-11 points). Even though our questions measure trust in institutions to handle COVID-19, some of this change likely also reflects the impact of anti-police-brutality protests that swept the country this spring and summer.
The overall results are depicted in the graph above. A few things are apparent to me. First, publicity works just not necessarily to the benefit of those crafting the publicity. Approval of state and local governments remains high although approval of Congress, the White House, the media, VP Biden, President Trump, and above all, social media is heading into the cellar.
The larger message is that public trust is being eroded in general.
“…publicity works…” “….public trust is being eroded in general….”
Hammer head, meet nail, although I’d use the word propaganda.
Note that the police and national level politicians/institutions had the biggest declines. Media disinformation works.
But I wonder. Imagine what the results might look like if they did some sort of poll that asked people “So you distrust all these institutions, but did you vote, and did you vote for the incumbent? And then gave them a basic fact quiz…..”
I know, I know. Put the bottle down and slowly back away, Guarneri…..
I cant believe banks are above 50%. How quickly we forget. As to the city and state ratings being better I think that is probably related to what we always see about Congress. People rate Congress poorly but tend to give their own congressperson good ratings. They do the same things with schools. Education sucks, but our local schools are great.
Steve