Democrats don’t trust the government either

A Pew Research study of people’s attitude towards the government has found that 89% of Republicans seldom trust the government.  But neither do 72% of Democrats.

Back in 1958, a similar study found that three-quarters of Americans did trust their government.  What happened since then, that both liberals and conservatives have become disenchanted with their government?  Has the government changed that much, or have Americans become more savvy about their leaders?  From Priya Anand, One Thing Democrats and Republicans Have in Common:

Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: Neither trusts the government very much.

Only 19% of Americans say they trust the government “always or most of the time,” according to a survey released Monday by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. That figure breaks down to 26% of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, and 11% of Republicans or Republican-leaners. (Pew Research interviewed 6,000 people between Aug. 27 and Oct. 4.)

And while there’s a significant gap between Republican and Democratic voters on the issue, the overall trust in the government has plummeted over the last half-century. In 1958, when Pew first began asking Americans that question, about three-quarters of respondents said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.

Even with their party in the White House, 72% of Democrats say they trust the government “only sometimes or never,” compared with 89% of Republicans.

[Keep reading. . .]

There are many more interesting findings in this study, which you can access here.

HT:  Paul