Americans’ confidence in the police saw the sharpest rise by far compared to any other public institution this past year, according to a new Gallup poll, which in general shows public sentiment in institutions remains historically low.
Faith in institutions among Americans has been sliding for years, various polls have shown, with the dearth of confidence being pervasive, extending from politics to banking, from the presidency to television news, and from Congress to organized religion.
Overall, confidence in law enforcement among Americans saw an eight-point jump among U.S. adults, rising from 43 percent last year to 51 percent this year.
The increase in confidence in the police was sharpest among America’s youngest generation of adults, soaring by 16 points from 27 percent last year to 43 percent this year among those aged 18–34.
Small business and the military had the highest confidence ratings, with 68 percent and 61 percent of Americans respectively giving them an overall majority-level confidence rating, a category that combines a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence.
At the other end of the spectrum, there was television news and Congress. These two were the worst, notching 12 percent and 9 percent confidence levels, respectively.
The 17 institutions covered by the poll, along with their 2023 and 2024 confidence levels, are as follows:
The Gallup poll was carried out on a representative sample of 1,005 adults living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with a 4 percent margin of error.
OECD Survey Shows Similar Ebbs in Trust
The Gallup pole comes on the heels of a survey carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) into levels of public trust in government, which fell by 2 percentage points on average among the 30 countries—which doesn’t include the United States—surveyed between 2021 to 2024.Across the 30 countries, the share of people with low or no trust in the national government (44 percent) outweighed the share of those with high or moderately high trust (39 percent).
The countries included are mostly in Europe—Australia, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—plus New Zealand, Korea, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica.