MSU researchers interviewed 1,013 adults statewide early this year.
Michigan doesn't have nearly as many uneasy voters as Egypt does, though a sizable share of adults here also mistrust government -- particularly the branch in Washington, D.C.
“Trust in federal government . . . has worsened substantially” since 9/11, says Professor Charles Ballard. [Photo from MSU]
Michigan State University researchers, who began taking the political pulse of adults statewide in 1994, are accustomed to seeing that "Michigan’s citizens are somewhat wary of government at all levels," as survey director Charles Ballard puts it.
Actually, "somewhat wary" seems overly polite. The latest quarterly figures, issued this week, show that distrust of federal officials and bureaucrats is the default setting for more than two-fifths of adults statewide.
Twenty-two percent say they seldom trust the feds and 20 percent answered "almost never." Just 15 percent expressed consistent faith in the federal government.
It makes one wonder how many of the can't-trust-them folks support the Tea Party movement or even vote -- questions not addressed by the bare-bones survey, which also doesn't explore the basis of mistrust.
Callers from MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research interviewed 1,013 adults earlier this year via landlines and cell phones. The two sample segments that rarely trust those at the federal level total 419 people.
Confidence is slightly higher at the Lansing level, with 19 percent saying they trust state government nearly always or most of the time. Thirty-one percent pick the lowest categories of seldom and almost never.
At the county and municipal level, 79 percent of respondents have trust most or some of the time.
Ballard, who also posted a 20-slide presentation of the findings, adds perspective in his release:
“Trust in state government has been fairly stable during the last three years, but the long-term trend remains decidedly negative.
“Trust in federal government surged upward immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks. It has worsened substantially since then.”
The economics professor notes that distrust of the feds is remarkably higher among elected and appointed local office-holders, according to a spring survey by the University of Michigan.
A striking 59 percent of local officials say they trust the federal government seldom or almost never. . . .
“Our surveys ask the same questions, but they show some sharp differences between local officials and the general public,” said Ballard. “Trust in the federal government is substantially lower among Michigan’s local officials than the Michigan public.” . . .
The U-M study, conducted April-June 2013, involved surveys sent via hardcopy and the Internet to top elected and appointed officials in all counties, cities, villages and townships in Michigan. A total of 1,350 jurisdictions returned valid surveys, resulting in a 73-percent response rate.
Bottom line: The president, Congress and federal civil servants aren't as widely unpopular as Mohamed Morsi and his nation's Muslim Brotherhood, but they've alienated a notable share of Michiganians for some reason or reasons.
