- 57% of Utah Democrats said they have no trust at all in Congress.
- 47% of Democratic voters have no trust in the Utah Legislature.
- Utah Republicans expressed more trust in almost every institution than Democrats.
The country’s crisis of confidence has found a home in Utah, especially among the red state’s minority of Democratic voters, according to a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll.
Roughly half of Utah Democrats reported having no confidence at all in the U.S. Congress or the Utah Legislature — a rate 35 percentage points higher than that of Republicans, the poll found.
Democratic distrust comes amid Republican control in Washington, D.C., and Salt Lake City. But it also points to problems beyond political tribalism, said Jason Perry, director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute.
“What we are seeing in the data is not just partisan disagreement, but a much deeper concern about representation,” Perry told the Deseret News. “It suggests they feel disconnected from the decisions being made on their behalf.”
This level of dissonance from Democrats toward institutions like Congress and the courts should not be ignored, according to Perry, because it can “lead to disengagement, or in some cases, an energized push for change.”
What’s behind Democratic distrust?
The Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll, conducted by HarrisX from July 9-16, asked 802 Utah voters how much confidence, if any, they have in three national and four statewide institutions.
The institution that received the greatest expression of disapproval was Congress. Overall, 36% of respondents marked “none,” as opposed to “some” or “a great deal,” to indicate their level of confidence.
A small majority, 52%, of Utah voters voiced “some” confidence in Congress, while 12% responded saying they had “a great deal” of confidence in federal lawmakers — the smallest share of any institution included in the survey.
Political institutions are representations of the principles in the United States’ founding documents, like freedom, equality and the separation of powers, according to Derek Monson, the chief growth officer at Sutherland Institute.
“Institutional trust comes down to how well the institutions are doing at embodying those ideas and those principles,” Monson told the Deseret News.
When institutions and their members fail to reflect those principles, then trust erodes, Monson said, because voters start to believe that government officials are not doing the job they were put in power to do.
At least 1 in 5 Utah voters expressed zero confidence toward each of the political institutions included in the survey: 25% for the Utah Legislature, 24% for the governor, 23% for the U.S. Supreme Court and 18% for the Utah Supreme Court.
How deep is the partisan divide?
Negative feelings toward the legislative branch were pegged closely to partisanship. The poll found that 57% of Utah Democrats had zero confidence in Congress, compared to 48% of independents and 22% of Republicans.
Utah Democrats were also much more likely to indicate a lack of confidence in other institutions: 47% of Democratic voters said they have no confidence in the Utah Legislature, compared to 35% of independents and 12% of Republicans.
A similar percentage of Democrats (46%) said they have no trust in the U.S. Supreme Court. And Democrats were also the most likely, by significant margins, to distrust the Utah governor (31%) and the Utah Supreme Court (24%).
Utah Democratic Party chair Brian King said the partisan split partially boils down to how party labels affect voter perception. If the party in power were different, King has no doubt Republicans would display more distrust.
“If those labels were reversed, in terms of Democrat versus Republican, the same thing would be true,” King said. “The out-of-power voter is going to say that the other side is not doing a good job.”
But Democrats’ dearth of confidence also stems from White House policies — supported by a Republican Congress, governor’s office and Legislature — that leaves them feeling unrepresented, King said.
The deficiency in Democratic institutional trust has the potential to decrease political engagement for some who feel hopeless about the system, King said, while galvanizing others who want to push against it.
Universities, a positive sign?
Republicans did outpace Democrats in their distrust toward one institution, with nearly a quarter of Republicans reporting no confidence in universities nationwide. However, there was clear cross-partisan trust toward Utah’s university system.
Republican and Democratic voters shared roughly identical views, with more than 30% of both groups reporting “a great deal” of confidence in Utah colleges and universities, nearly 60% expressing “some” confidence and 12% saying “none.”
“Many people have direct ties as students, alumni, or family, which builds trust,” Perry said. “These schools are also leaders in life saving research and innovation, especially in areas like medicine, mental health and cancer. That kind of impact is visible and personal, and it builds confidence and trust in these institutions.”
The confidence Utah voters have in their system of higher education may provide a blueprint for the rest of the country’s institutions, according to Monson, who has researched rebuilding institutional trust at Sutherland Institute.
Utahns trust their universities because they observe firsthand the good they can do. In a similar way, if voters engage with people, parties and politicians they disagree with, they can diffuse the misunderstandings that otherwise make the political stakes feel so high, Monson said.
“Too many of us view the other team politically as being a cancer on society, as opposed to a healthy part of a self-governing system, which is going to bring multiple viewpoints to the table and bring them into national solutions, because that’s how it’s designed to work,” Monson said.
Poll: Job approval for Gov. Spencer Cox
Utah voters were also asked to rate how they think Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is doing in his job. Among respondents, 57% either strongly or somewhat approved of the job Cox is doing, similar to the previous Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll in May.
Compared to prior months, Cox saw an uptick in support among Republican voters, from 68% to 71%, and among independents, from 45% to 47%, while falling among Democrats, from 37% to 32%, compared to May.
Correction: An earlier version of this story had a graphic from a different month’s poll.