Washington, D.C. — Americans are increasingly skeptical of information coming from the federal government, with majorities expressing little or no trust across several major policy areas, according to a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts poll.
About 6 in 10 adults said they trust federal information only a little or not at all when it comes to elections and politics, foreign affairs, the environment, abortion and immigration. Distrust has risen on nearly every issue measured since a similar 2019 survey, including education, where low trust increased from 37% to 53%.
Confidence in election certification has also slipped. Only 34% of adults said they trust government-certified election results “a great deal” or “quite a bit,” down from 40% in 2024. Among Democrats, that figure fell from 65% in 2024 to 44%, while 29% of Republicans expressed high confidence.
The decline spans more than the current administration. Americans also expressed very low trust in partisan campaign messaging, with only about 1 in 10 saying messages from either Democrats or Republicans are always or often factual.
The survey comes after significant changes across the federal bureaucracy during President Donald Trump’s second term, including agency cuts, staff departures and shifts in health and environmental policy. The poll does not establish that those changes alone caused the decline in trust, but it found that partisan differences have widened considerably.
The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll surveyed 1,036 adults from July 29 through Aug. 10 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
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