While Politics Divides the Country, Americans Share a Profound Sense of Distrust
Author
Tom Rosenstiel
Senior Fellow, Public Affairs & Media Research
Client
Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication
January 2025
To understand how Americans engage with government, news, civic life, and each other, researchers need to more broadly study their attitudes.
Temper what you’ve heard about Americans being hopelessly polarized along party, demographic, or ideological lines. NORC’s new foundational study for Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication has found that Americans still share some things in common—a deep and growing distrust of the government, the media, and their fellow citizens.
Our findings are alarming. Regardless of party affiliation, barely one in 10 of our respondents thinks that the government represents them well. Only two in 10 trust government officials to do the right thing. Seven in 10 believe that corporations and the wealthy control government and that politicians are only in it for themselves. One in four Americans say the country needs not just big changes but a total overhaul to get back on track.
This shared cynicism doesn’t mean the country isn’t deeply polarized politically. The parties are deeply divided beyond anything I’ve seen in my more than 30 years working in journalism, including roles as a press critic for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek’s chief congressional correspondent, the founder and director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, and now an educator at the University of Maryland.
My experience as a journalist and researcher also suggests that many of the survey questions we’ve used for decades are now obsolete or insufficient. This is especially true of polling on civic attitudes. Focusing on finite markers like age, education, and party affiliation has created a two-sided, left-right narrative that has led us to believe that the nation is polarized along party lines. By digging deeper, we’ve found that there are five sides to the story and that on some fronts those sides are more unified than divided.
“Focusing on finite markers like age, education, and party affiliation has created a two-sided, left-right narrative that has led us to believe that the nation is polarized along party lines. By digging deeper, we’ve found that there are five sides to the story and that on some fronts those sides are more unified than divided.”
NORC took an unusually deep dive into people’s concerns and motivations.
My colleagues and I are the first to try to examine all of people’s different behaviors and attitudes, to gauge their mood and perspectives on long-standing and systemic issues. To do so, we included the typical questions about political ideology, age, race, education and other demographics alongside a battery of deeper, more nuanced inquiries about trust in U.S. democratic processes and political institutions, connections to community, faith in fellow Americans and the media, outlook on diversity, the economy, and the American Dream. Because of this, the design and testing of our survey was lengthy. In the end, only about half of our questions made it into the final 43-question survey.
Our findings revealed five distinct types of Americans.
Our data reveal that the nation can be more clearly understood as five groups that do not divide neatly along party or ideological lines and sometimes share unexpected similarities:
- The Ambivalent (29 percent): are slightly more moderate and less concerned about current politics. They also have high trust in the military, scientific community, local government, and other people.
- Classically Liberal (22 percent): are mostly non-religious college-educated Caucasians who are dissatisfied with the state of politics and support immigrants. Like The Ambivalent, they highly trust the military, scientific community, local government, and other people.
- Mostly MAGA (21 percent): are, like the Classically Liberal, mostly white people who are dissatisfied with the current state of politics yet highly trust local government, the military, and other people. They are primarily older, Republican, and Christian and have high trust in religion and the Supreme Court.
- The Disillusioned (15 percent): have a negative view of the nation’s economy and future and are less satisfied with their quality of life, financial situation, and prospects for economic mobility. They skew younger, have lower incomes, are less educated, more moderate and have low trust in institutions and other people.
- The Believers (13 percent): skew older, are religiously diverse, and tend to be Democrats. They have a positive view of democracy and the country’s future, are more satisfied with their quality of life and financial situation, and are less concerned about current politics.
Other Notable Findings
- Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) Americans say that our best days are behind us, including 62 percent of The Disillusioned and more than half of Mostly MAGA (51 percent).
- A majority (59 percent) of Americans believes “substantial” change is needed, including the Classically Liberal (69 percent) and Mostly MAGA (65 percent). Sixty percent of The Disillusioned think there needs to be a total overhaul. Mostly MAGA and the Classically Liberal report high levels of political participation, with 90 percent of both voting in presidential elections “always or most of the time” and 70 percent saying they also vote in the midterms. Both also avidly seek and consume news.
- Six in 10 Americans rate our economy as being “very or somewhat poor,” including 89 percent of the Mostly MAGA and 82 percent of The Disillusioned. However, only 28 percent of respondents report being pessimistic about their personal finances.
- The majority in each group—including 80 percent of The Believers, Classically Liberal, and Mostly MAGA and 54 percent of The Disillusioned—says that the media they use does a good job of informing them, even though they may view other aspects of news coverage as being less dependable.
- Regarding the American Dream, 61 percent say they’ve achieved it or are on their way. This includes 38 percent of The Believers and 34 percent of Mostly MAGA. However, 69 percent of the youngest, most racially diverse, and lowest-earning Americans—The Disillusioned—disagree.
These and our other findings underscore that we cannot understand how Americans engage with government, news, civic life, and each other without more broadly investigating their troubled emotions, deeper feelings, and attitudes. This hasn’t been done before because it’s a complicated, time- and labor-intensive endeavor. NORC is one of the few trusted, nonpartisan research organizations with the sophistication, scientific rigor, and the “muscle”—via AmeriSpeak® and multidisciplinary teams of researchers—to execute this caliber of research.
Policy Implications
Because every good piece of research suggests new research, I hope this new typology inspires future researchers to investigate why so many Americans feel misunderstood or unseen. Our findings also provide journalists and policymakers with unique opportunities to meet people where they are, to better meet their needs, ultimately restore faith in democratic institutions and leaders, and rebuild the public square.
Suggested Citation
Rosenstiel, T. (2025, January 27). While Politics Divide the Country, Americans Share a Profound Sense of Distrust. [Web blog post]. NORC at the University of Chicago. Retrieved from https://www.norc.org.
