Long term, short term

 The General Social Survey has a series of questions about confidence in "the people running" various institutions that has been asked since the early 1970s.  But the GSS was not the first to ask these questions--they were originally from the Harris Poll.  The very first time was in the 1965 survey of college students that I wrote about recently, but they were also asked of a national sample in 1967.  The figure shows average confidence in institutions in 1967 and 2024 (the most recent round of the GSS):

The line indicates equal confidence in both years.  With one exception, they are below the line, meaning average confidence was lower in 2024 than in 1967.  The exception is organized labor, where average confidence was almost exactly the same.  I think that is because organized labor has become less prominent:  there are fewer strikes or the threat of strikes, or large wage increases that might lead to inflation or tax increases.  In 1967, 23% said they had a great deal of confidence and 33% said that they had very little confidence:  in 2024, "great deal" had fallen to 18%, but "very little" had also fallen, to 24%.  So you could say that there's been a move towards indifference.

The other institutions all have substantial declines, but several stand out:

Congress has had the largest decline (-0.82; changes for the executive branch and the Supreme Court are about -0.6).  Science, military, and television have had relatively small declines (-.25 to -.33).  I've discussed confidence in the military before.  For TV, I think it's because people entertainment programming as well as news (questions specifically about TV news show a large decline).  The relatively small decline for "the scientific community" is interesting, since a lot of people have talked about the growth of anti-science attitudes in recent years.  The GSS also asks about medicine, and the decline is considerably larger than the decline for science (-.52 to -.24).  

I looked at confidence in science, medicine, and education in an earlier post, and noted that there was a growing split between liberals and conservatives in the last few years, presumably because of the reaction to Covid.  That was before the 2024 GSS came out, so here are the updated figures:

Very little change from 2022 to 2024.

A drop from 2022 to 2024 among both liberals and conservatives, but larger among conservatives.  Also, liberal confidence increased in 2018 and 2021, so the decline leaves them about where they were in 2016.  With conservatives, confidence is at its lowest level ever.  

Finally, education:

A slight increase from 2022 to 2024 among both liberals and conservatives.  

The liberal/conservative gap for confidence in education and science grew between 2016/8 and 2022, but stayed about the same between 2022 and 2024.  In contrast, the gap for confidence in medicine kept growing.  Why?  My thought is that more people are interested in medicine and feel like they have some basis for offering opinions--they can talk about what happened when they got a vaccine, or someone they know got a vaccine.  As a result, there's more momentum in public opinion when doubts start to grow.  Another possibility is that it was driven by the prominent role of RFK, Jr. in the presidential race.

[Data from the GSS and Odum Institute Data Archive]