Pollster says Americans tend to trust local institutions more than national ones

Pollster Robert Griffin said Monday that Americans tend to put more trust in local institutions than national and international groups. 

“One of the things that we consistently see is that when you ask people about trust at different levels, they still do trust local institutions a lot more than they trust institutions that feel far away from them,” Griffin, research director at the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.” 

“So if it is just the case that there’s just simply less of these local institutions influencing people’s perceptions of what government is, and what government can do for them then that’s sort of a problem long term,” he continued. 

Polling indicates that Americans tend to trust institutions more at the local level than they do at the national level. 

A Gallup survey, conducted and released last year, found that 67 percent of Americans said they put “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in small businesses, and 54 percent said the same about police forces. 

Thirty-seven percent of Americans surveyed said they put “a great deal” or “quite a lot” in the presidency, and only 11 percent said the same about Congress. 

— Julia Manchester