Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Voters say they have nothing to fear more than government itself

Broken American flag
natasaadzic/Getty Images

There's fresh evidence that anxiety about the many ways American democracy is malfunctioning remains very high in the national consciousness.

More than a third of Americans now view the government itself as the top problem in the United States, the Gallup survey out Monday finds. Those results offer all candidates now running for office a clear rationale for elevating plans to "fix the system" closer to the top of their policy agendas.

So far, however, proposals for reforming democracy have received minimal attention in the 2020 campaign — neither in the presidential race that's been underway all year nor in the hundreds of congressional and state legislative contests just starting to gel.


President Trump, whose upset victory was spurred in part by impassioned promises to "drain the swamp," essentially never mentions that aspiration any more. And while all the top-tier Democratic candidates have unveiled proposals for tackling some of the system's perceived shortcomings, talk about them has been next to nonexistent in their stump speeches or in the first four nationally televised debates.

To the extent Democrats have talked of healing democracy's wounds, it has been to profess broad agreement about the corrupting influence of big money on policymaking and the dangers of Trump flouting democratic norms and upsetting the balance of powers. There's been minimal discussion of their concrete proposals for regulating campaign finance or raising Congress and the courts back on par with the executive branch — and even less talk about ways to bolster confidence in American elections, expand voting rights, ease access to the ballot box or get politicians out of the business of choosing their own constituents.

There's ample reason for that to change in light of Gallup's latest findings — which show that just 11 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents describe themselves as satisfied with the country's direction. And the number of Republicans professing satisfaction dropping sharply in the past month as well.

One big reason is a surge of anxiety that's almost surely a result of the House's launch of a move toward Trump's impeachment: 34 percent volunteered the government, poor leadership or politicians as the most important problem facing the country — up 11 percentage points since September and just a single point shy of the record, set this February after the end of the longest partial federal government shutdown in history.

The current 34 percent are broadly bipartisan: 41 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans, and each of those shares has jumped 13 points in a month. Independent are marginally more sanguine about the government: 27 percent say it's worry No. 1, an 8-point rise since summer ended.)

But the blame for the government's ills exposes a sharp partisan divide: Republicans mention Congress and political parties way more than Democrats, who cite the president and impeachment most often.

At least as worrisome for the country, however, is that the government-is-the-problem number has been high for a very long stretch.

Gallup has been tracking the public's views of the nation's most important problems for eight decades. In each month for the five years after the Great Recession started in 2008, economic-related issues topped the list volunteered by the voters. But the trend during the Trump administration is rivaling that for consistency. "Government," which takes in negative comments about leadership and politicians, has been the top problem in all but three of the Gallup's 34 soundings since January 2017. (Immigration topped the list the other times.)

Before a spike of 33 percent during the 2013 budget standoff between President Barack Obama and a divided Congress, the highest share of voters naming the government as America's biggest problem was 26 percent just before President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in the Watergate scandal.

The latest poll is based on a survey conducted Oct. 1-13 of 1,526 U.S. adults. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025
a group of windmills in the sky above the clouds

We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025

On May 8th, 2025, the Network for Responsible Public Policy (NFRPP) convened a session to discuss the future of the transition to clean energy in the face of some stiff headwinds caused by the new US administration led by Donald Trump. The panel included Dale Bryk, Director of State and Regional Policy at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program and a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association, and Dan Sosland, President of the Acadia Center. The discussion was moderated by Richard Eidlin, National Policy Director for Business for America.

 
 


Keep ReadingShow less