This op-ed by State Policy Network’s Erin Norman first ran at Governing.

After years of record-low levels of trust in American institutions, there is positive movement, showing more Americans have trust in government than any time since 2020.

Tracking data collected by Heart+Mind Strategies and the State Policy Network starting in March of 2020 shows that trust in American government and media fell dramatically during the pandemic and then held steady, at low levels, through 2022. However, between January and May of this year, trust has jumped nine points for the federal government and eight points each for state and local government. More-modest gains have been made for newspapers and broadcast media. Even social media, which for years was blamed for politically motivated misinformation, is trusted by double the number of people compared to December of 2022 (18 percent in May).

However, these gains don’t tell the whole picture. Absolute levels of trust in our institutions remains low. The federal government is the least-trusted level, with just 1 in 4 Americans having strong levels of confidence in Washington. The institutions we rely on to tell us what the federal government is up to, print and broadcast media, are equally distrusted by the public. State and local governments fare slightly better, but still only about 1 in 3 Americans have high levels of trust in them.

Read the full piece at Governing here.