Americans Lost Trust In Religion And Congress, But Showed Trust In This Institution Elon Musk Doesn't Like

This article was originally published on July 8, 2022.

A new Gallup poll shows Americans posting record-low confidence levels in some items. Confidence in religion and Congress had big declines in June compared to the previous year.

One item that isn’t a favorite of Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk wasn’t on the list.

What Happened: Every year since 1973, Gallup has measured confidence across a variety of institutions by polling Americans. A recent poll conducted between June 1 and June 20, 2022, saw confidence levels in 11 of the 16 items drop significantly and no improvements in the remaining five items.

The items that saw the biggest drops in confidence were the Supreme Court, losing 11 percentage points and coming in at 25%, and President Joe Biden’s job approval, losing 15 percentage points and coming in at 23%.

Americans were most confident in small business, which had 68% of people saying they had a great deal of confidence or quite a lot of confidence. The score for small businesses dropped two percentage points.

The next highest for confidence was the military, coming in at 64%, losing five percentage points from the previous year.

Confidence in the Supreme Court (25%), the president (23%) and Congress (7%) all hit new lows.

Confidence in items such as religion, newspapers, criminal justice, big business and the police hit three-decade lows.

Fifteen of the 16 items saw a drop in confidence. The only item that remained the same score as a year ago was organized labor at 28%.

Here are the full results with the June 2022 confidence rating and (2021 confidence rating):

• Small businesses: 70% (68%)
• The military: 64% (69%)
• The police: 45% (51%)
• The medical system: 38% (44%)
• The church/organized religion: 31% (37%)
• Public schools: 28% (32%)
• Organized labor: 28% (28%)
• Banks: 27% (33%)
• Large technology companies: 26% (29%)
• Supreme Court: 25% (36%)
• The presidency: 23% (38%)
• Newspapers: 16% (21%)
• Criminal justice system: 14% (20%)
• Big business: 14% (18%)
• Television news: 11% (16%)
• Congress: 7% (12%)

Related Link: General Motors An EV Leader? Musk Says That's 'Next Level Insanity' In Rant Against White House, Unions

Why It’s Important — And What Musk Doesn't Like: The poll was also broken down by political party (Republican, Democrat and Independent).

The rating of the Supreme Court, which came before Roe v. Wade was overturned, dropped double-digits for Democrats and Independents, while it remained the same for Republicans.

Confidence in the military and police dropped double digits amongst Republicans.

Organized labor not seeing a decline in confidence comes as several large companies have seen unions push through with success. Starbucks Corporation SBUX, Apple Inc AAPL and Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN are among the companies that have seen unions win battles against them.

Musk has been outspoken about unions in the past and also critical of the role of the United Auto Workers Union in being at the White House for electric vehicle discussions, while Tesla sits out.

“Last year, President Biden held an EV summit where Tesla was explicitly not allowed but the UAW was. They have so much power over the White House,” Musk said.

Musk said the UAW prefers that Tesla unionizes, something he is against.

“I don’t like the UAW. Tesla has the highest pay in the auto industry. California is a very pro-union state, but the UAW has never been able to get people to do a vote for Tesla to unionize in California."

Confidence in organized labor was 41% for Democrats and went up from 13% to 15% for Republicans. Independents expressed less confidence in organized labor with the rating going from 28% to 27%.

Photo: Andrii Yalanskyi via Shutterstock