The federal policy landscape in the United States is undergoing rapid changes, with laws and norms governing safety nets, universities, and healthcare systems evolving faster than most people can process. These policy changes have been accompanied by increasingly negative political discourse that is spilling into communities and families. This data story aims to provide insight into the drivers and consequences of this rapidly changing federal policy landscape.
Using 30 years of data from the Gallup Poll Social Series (GPSS), we explore trends in political opinion from 1991 through August 2025. We examine changes in public opinion across various domains, including approval of the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, as well as trust in key institutions. The data illustrates that polarization has been a part of U.S. federal politics for decades, with recent data showing a significant degradation in confidence levels in institutions.
Polarization has been a consistent feature of U.S. politics for at least two decades. Satisfaction with the general direction of the country and the performance of the president has closely tracked with respondents’ party affiliation. This trend is evident in the data, which shows that satisfaction with the U.S. is driven by whether respondents have the same affiliation as the president in power. The political divide is not only state-to-state but also within states, with many counties having very different political leanings and related opinions about political and other institutions.
Attitudes towards a particular president are also driven by partisan affiliation rather than reflecting public opinion on actual policies and outcomes. There is a slight uptick in the national average among independents during exceptional events, such as September 11, 2001, the 2009 financial crisis, and the COVID pandemic, suggesting independents are more likely to focus on the issues at hand rather than partisan differences.
Congressional approval has also demonstrated a mild partisan trend but nowhere near to the degree of presidential approval or general direction of the U.S. Notably, Congressional approval has been consistently much lower than presidential approval regardless of party. Overall Congressional approval dropped over 20 years ago during the George W. Bush administration and has remained low since.
The relationship between party identity and political attitudes has remained relatively steady over time. However, there has been considerable change in respondents’ overall confidence in key institutions. For the past thirty years, the GPSS survey has asked respondents about their confidence in various institutions. Over the past 30 years, confidence in the office of the presidency has eroded significantly, while partisan differences still track with the party of the president.
Confidence in Congress as an institution held relatively steady at the end of the 20th century but then began to deteriorate in the early 2000s, with only 9.5% of respondents reporting high confidence in 2025, down from over 25% in the early 2000s. The deterioration is visible for respondents who identify with either Democrats or Republicans.
Confidence in the Supreme Court has changed along party lines more than the other institutions. There has been a long-term decline in confidence among Democrats while Republican confidence has been relatively steady. The year 2016 was a turning point for Democratic confidence in the Supreme Court; confidence plummeted and has yet to stabilize. This partisan divide has contributed to a deterioration of overall lack of confidence in the high court.
On the national scale, there has been a gradual decline in trust in media, with the decline most pronounced among Republicans. The decline in trust in the media took a big fall among Republicans during Trump’s first term but was already declining prior to that. However, confidence in media remains higher than in political institutions.
Confidence in banks dropped significantly during the 2009 financial crisis and has yet to return to pre-crisis levels. Confidence in business has been mixed, with trends slightly different by partisan affiliation but also depending on whether businesses are big, medium, or small. Over the past two decades, confidence in big business has declined slightly, with only 16% of respondents reporting high confidence, down from 25% in 1990. Throughout the survey period, Republicans have consistently said they have more confidence in big business than Democrats. On the other hand, confidence in small business has remained high and even grown slightly. In 2025, more than 65% of respondents report overall report high confidence.
Since the 2010s, confidence in organized labor has increased among both Democrats and Republicans, even as the percentage of U.S. workers who are union members has declined. Democrats remain more likely than Republicans to report having “a great deal” or “a lot” of confidence in organized labor, although the majority (68%) of Republicans today report having at least “some” confidence in organized labor.
These visualizations suggest that, despite the turbulent policy environment and contentious political rhetoric, our high level of partisanship is not something new. What seems to be extraordinary in this period is the low confidence in political institutions. Confidence in the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court have all eroded over time, perhaps driven in part by the dysfunction in governance that is increasingly a result of extreme polarization. Likewise, confidence in the media has declined (although less than in government institutions) and has also become increasingly partisan. However, confidence in organized labor has increased to pre-Great Recession levels across party lines. And confidence in small business remains high among both Democrats and Republicans, much like confidence in state and local government remains high across party-lines, suggesting more favorable and united public opinion of local institutions compared to national ones.
Decline in Confidence in Political Institutions
The decline in confidence in political institutions, in part but not only driven by the partisan divide, is the most consistent trend identified. One potential cause is the partisan divide in information consumption, leading to an increase in misinformation and the proliferation of extreme political views. Another potential cause is the decline of working-class jobs and lifestyles, with increasing numbers of workers without a B.A. having much lower quality and unstable jobs than in the past. This contributes to uncertainties in areas such as access to health insurance and higher education, the costs of which have become unaffordable for most working-class families. Workers in declining manufacturing communities and with related low levels of well-being have provided a strong basis of support for the populist agenda.
Causes of Decline in Confidence
Some public opinion trends, such as the decline of confidence in big business or the modest rise of Democrats’ confidence in unions, could be explained by increases in inequality of incomes and opportunities during the same time. One example is the increases in inequality between workers and CEOs, which is much greater in the U.S. than in any other wealthy country. The pay gap between CEOs and workers at the lowest-paying firms on the S&P 500 rose by almost 13% between 2019 and 2024, with CEO pay rising more than twice as quickly as that of the average worker. The average CEO now makes 281 times what the average worker makes per year. At the same time, the power of organized labor has decreased dramatically, in part due to employer opposition to unions and the absence of strong labor laws in the U.S.
Need for Further Research
This data description encourages further research into the causes and consequences of diminishing confidence in political institutions. While partisanship has always been present, the dramatic decline in confidence in institutions is a more recent trend. While some possible causes for that are noted, it is worth a deeper examination which can provide some possible strategies that political and other leaders could use to stem and even eventually reverse the tide. Support for trusted sources of information, such as local newspapers, and making it easier for all citizens to vote as opposed to the current trend towards reducing voting modalities, such as mail-in ballots and constant gerrymandering of districts, would certainly be a good start. However, these measures alone are unlikely to solve the problem. In the wake of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, it is clear that the stakes of our political division and its effects on effective governance are growing more costly each day.
