Trust in federal government information has fallen across nearly every issue tested since 2024, and the erosion is now touching something as basic as whether Americans believe official election results at all. Just 34% of U.S. adults say they trust government certifications of election results, down from 40% in 2024, according to newly released polling. The decline comes as both parties head into the 2026 midterms increasingly convinced that neither side's campaign is being straight with them.
The findings come from the AP-NORC and USA Facts “State of the Facts 2026” survey, released Wednesday, which sampled 1,036 adults from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel between July 29 and August 10. As reported by the Pioneer Press, roughly 6 in 10 U.S. adults now say they have low trust in federal government information on the environment, foreign affairs, elections and politics, abortion, or immigration. The poll carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points for adults overall. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, its biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey Comprehensive Report, published on June 30, 2025, analyzes state-by-state election-administration data.
A Deepening Partisan Split Over Election Certification
The partisan breakdown on election certification trust is stark and moving in opposite directions. Democrats' trust in election certifications fell from 65% in 2024 to 44% now, while Republicans' trust rose only slightly to 29% from where it stood in 2024, per the same survey. Election certification — the process by which local and state officials confirm the vote count — became politicized after Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, and trust in government information generally has grown more partisan since Trump's first term, according to the survey's authors.
That partisan gap is now much wider than it was during Trump's first term, the survey found. Democrats' doubts about government information declined under President Biden, then spiked again once Trump regained power, while Republicans' mistrust of government information had risen while Biden was in office and fell after Trump returned to the White House. Independents, meanwhile, became more mistrustful of government information under Biden and did not shift further under Trump, the survey found.
Kim Murza told the survey's authors the current administration is doing whatever it can to put distrust in people's minds, while Jeremy Cove said he loves Trump and voted for him but that some of Trump's actions have increased his own distrust. Not everyone shares that view: Larry Haith said he has more confidence in the federal government today than he has had in years. Shannon Ingram, for her part, said it is pretty hard to trust anything being communicated right now.
Voter Fraud Claims and New Voting Restrictions
U.S. adults are also concerned that the federal government could publicly discredit or question election results, tamper with results, or pressure state election officials, the survey found. Trump has repeated long-debunked allegations of mass voter fraud tied to the 2020 election and has pushed Congress to enact a proof-of-citizenship requirement to register and vote. He has also attempted to place new restrictions on mail voting ahead of the midterms, according to the Pioneer Press's reporting on the survey. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has warned that state officials could lose funding or face investigations if they do not comply with Trump's election-security demands.
That national pressure echoes what Hoodline found in swing-district reporting earlier this year: a UC San Diego survey showed only 30% of Republicans look primarily to the president when judging whether an election was fair, with most instead relying on local election officials, television news, or family. Trust in national news outlets and cable news networks is also low overall for information about election outcomes, the AP-NORC survey found. Local administrative changes have compounded the friction, as Hoodline documented when Williamson County, Texas eliminated countywide vote centers ahead of its March primary, producing long lines and voter confusion at precinct-only polling places.
Campaign Messages and the Vaccine Fight
Skepticism extends well beyond elections and into how voters view the campaigns themselves. Democrats trust their own party's campaign messages as factual at about one-quarter, and Republicans trust their own party's messages at roughly the same rate, the survey found. Overall, only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults say Democratic or Republican Party campaign messages are always or often based in factual information.
Health policy has become another flashpoint. Changes to federal health advice have put doctors and medical organizations at odds with the Trump administration over vaccination recommendations, and Democrats, Republicans and independents alike now trust federal vaccination recommendations and safety information only a little or not at all, at about 6 in 10 across party lines, the survey found. The Trump administration has changed longstanding health advice more broadly, contributing to the erosion.
Not every number is falling. Trust in education information has actually climbed, rising from 37% in 2019 to 53% now — a 9 percentage point increase in just the last year alone, according to the survey. But on the federal budget, distrust is heavily lopsided: Democrats report low trust in federal budget information at 61%, compared with 42% among Republicans.
Agency Cuts and a Warning From Experts
Since entering the White House for a second term, Trump has moved to shutter entire federal agencies, end longstanding federal programs, and begin dismantling key parts of the federal bureaucracy, the survey's authors note. Thousands of federal employees have been fired or have left their jobs, reducing the ranks of government statisticians and other experts who compile the data agencies rely on. Experts have warned that these staffing changes risk data quality across the federal government.
One especially concrete example cited in the polling context is at the Environmental Protection Agency, which rescinded a scientific finding that had underpinned federal action on climate change for more than a decade. Overall, mistrust in federal government information has risen on nearly every topic asked about in the AP-NORC/USA Facts survey since 2019, and is now higher than it was at the end of Trump's first term. The poll carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 6.0 percentage points for Democrats and plus or minus 6.4 percentage points for Republicans.
A Decades-Long Slide in Institutional Trust
The current numbers fit into a much longer arc of American disillusionment with government. Trust in the federal government in Washington has been historically low, according to long-term tracking from the Pew Research Center. Pew's research describes erosion during the Vietnam War and continued decline in the 1970s.
Federal trust also tends to flip depending on which party holds the White House. Republican trust in the federal government rose from 10% in 2024 to 42% in 2025, while Democratic trust was 31% in 2025 — a pattern consistent with historical polling since the 1960s showing higher trust among members of the governing president's party.
Congress has its own role in the credibility fight. The U.S. House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act in February 2026, requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and state-issued photo ID to vote in federal elections, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The bill did not advance in the Senate. Separately, New York and New Jersey House lawmakers have raised concerns about AI chatbots misinforming voters ahead of the midterms, and a possible cyberattack involving a Wake County election software vendor was reported.
