Horowitz: High Trust in Principals, Police & the Military—-Not Congress or Tech Executives

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

PHOTO: Worcester Police

Public school principals, police officers, and military leaders are highly trusted by the American public, while members of Congress and leaders of technology companies are not, according to a recently released national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. The survey tested Americans’ public confidence measured in a variety of ways in key categories of leaders and officials in our society: members of Congress, local elected officials, K-12 public school principals, journalists, military leaders, police officers, leaders of technology companies and religious leaders.

As the survey report elaborates, “…the public has the most confidence in the way K-12 public school principals, military leaders and police officers operate when it comes to caring about people, providing fair and accurate information to the public and handling resources responsibly” Some 84% think principals care about the students they serve “some of the time” or “all or most of the time,” 79% think police officers care about them at that level of frequency, and 73% have the same level of confidence in military leaders.

Members of Congress and leaders of technology companies didn’t earn nearly as high marks. Only about half of American adults think that members of Congress and “tech firm bosses” care about people all, most of. or some of the time, for example. Roughly, the same percentage of people believe that Congress provides fair and accurate information at least some of the time, while tech leaders do a bit better with 6-in-10 thinking they provide fair and accurate information at least some of the time.

Falling in the mid-range, with most American adults still indicating fairly high degrees of trust, are religious leaders, journalists, and local elected officials. Generally speaking, in polls of public opinion, local elected officials are far more favorably perceived than national elected officials. People have more faith in local government and in most cases believe their city or town is far better managed than the national government.

While most of the findings in this survey, held across the board, there were some key differences among segments of the population. Journalists, for example, were much less trusted by self-identified Republicans. Police officers were not as trusted by African-Americans and Latinos. “Roughly seven-in-ten white Americans (72%) say police officers treat racial and ethnic groups equally at least some of the time. In comparison, half of Hispanics and just 33% of black adults say the same,” the poll report states.

In general, Americans do believe that people in positions of power--even among the groups of leaders they trust more-- often behave unethically and that there are usually few consequences for doing so. Similarly, they believe these societal leaders only rarely admit mistakes or take responsibility for them.

The precipitous decline in public confidence in our leaders and institutions is one of the major problems facing our democracy, making it far more difficult to get things done. The Pew study provides important insights into this problem. To read the whole report, click on

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.