Democrats don’t trust the government either

Americans have lost their trust in government, according to a new Pew poll.

Among the positive views of the government, about 72 percent of people believe the government is doing a good job of keeping the country safe from attacks, 79 percent said the government responds well to natural disasters and 72 percent said the government ensures safe food and medicine – all issues which those surveyed believe the government should play a major role in.

The only candidate in the top of the Republican field who does not do better among angry Republicans is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Fully 80% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they prefer a smaller government with fewer services, compared with just 31% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

The study comes one year before voters hit the polls to vote on a new president as Barack Obama closes his second term and may partly explain why the two leading Republican contenders – Donald Trump and Ben Carson – are both political outsiders. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there is a 15-percentage-point gap between the proportion of conservatives (81%) and moderates and liberals (66%) who say the government is always wasteful and inefficient.

The USA public is widely distrustful of the US government and is critical of its performance on a number of issues, found the Pew survey. According to the data presented, in 2007, 88 percent of white Republicans and 70 percent of white Democrats identified as Christian, an 18-point disparity.

But most still don’t see their political opponents as the enemy.

And yet the Pew poll shows a majority of Republicans supports an income safety net for the elderly. However, the polling firm found a sharp partisan divide on the question, with 38 percent of Republicans opposing the move to only 11 percent in favor.

3Despite their widespread cynicism, most Americans give government good ratings in a number of areas.

Remarkably, almost two-thirds of all Americans, including a majority in both parties, say that “their side” is losing more often than it’s winning on the issues that matter to them.

Citing Pew statistics, Brownstein observed that the general religious shift in America away from Christianity has come to the Democratic Party much faster than the Republican Party. It could also be partly because social insurance for the elderly is seen as a program that is there for everyone, since everyone will get old one day (unless of course premature death intervenes), whereas government health care and aid to the poor benefit specific groups.

That’s compared to just 12 percent for Democrats and Democratic leaners. A broad majority agree that money has a greater influence on politics than it used to. The trust level percentage rose into the 40s at times during the middle part of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, declined through most of George H.W. Bush’s presidency and fell all the way to 20 percent during the second year of Bill Clinton’s time in the White House.

The biggest exception was managing the immigration system.

Do you even have to ask? It’s asking too much in the skeptical age. Just half of young Democrats say this.