Political candidates trust government more than their party’s voters

by JoJo Martin

This spring, I’ve been interning at the Massachusetts State House. Within most meetings, hearings, and sessions, a similar refrain is sung by many in attendance: “We can’t rely on, trust, predict, or even try to understand the federal government.” Meanwhile, federal programs and assistance to states are being cut based on the politics of that state. The Trump administration has come down on Massachusetts, threatening to cut and cut funding for education, immigrant support, and more. State and federal elected officials undermining each other seems to be an increasing occurrence.

This led me to ask the question: Do people who run for governmental positions trust the institutions they seek to be a part of, or is it the opposite? The 2022 Cooperative Election Study (CES) asks respondents if they have ever run for any type of office, including state or federal, as well as their level of trust in the federal and state governments. I grouped respondents into two categories: those who reported trusting the government ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount,’ and those who expressed ‘not very much’ or ‘no trust at all. This allowed me to get a sense of how candidates who seek to hold elected offices trusted the government pre-Trump 2.0, the results of which are shown in the graph below.

Regardless of partisanship, individuals who ran for office trusted both state and federal governments more than those who didn’t. This suggests that people who seek office aren’t just chasing power or to entirely restructure the systems. Rather, it shows they believe in the institutions they hope to lead.

It also reveals trends along party lines. In 2022, Democrats showed a significantly higher level of trust in the federal government compared to Republicans and Independents. Generally, it would make sense that Democrats trust the government more. Their ideology is based more in a bigger government program than Republicans and certainly Independents.

It is logical that the Democrats would trust the federal government more in 2022, as Democrats controlled the presidency. In the current era of national polarization, the presidency is the office that people associate the federal government with.

Independents trust their state government twice as much as they do the federal government. They also trust in the state government more than Republicans do, and their increased trust is amplified among those who ran for office. This suggests that Independents, in particular, may find state government more accessible, aligned with their personal values, and less entrenched in the two-party system than the federal government, making them more likely to trust state leadership and process compared to federal institutions.

I was interested in how the results may potentially swing after the election when voters knew that Trump would soon reign over the federal government again.

The shape of the graph is very similar to 2022, though the proportion of Democrats who trust the federal government is lower across the board. Running for office has much less of an effect on trust in the federal government. Despite the change in Democratic trust, Republicans and Independents remain more skeptical of the Federal government.

I was also interested in whether those who ran for office favored a specific form of political participation, and whether that was different between parties. I created a linear regression and visualized the results:

The graph shows that those who run for office are more likely to report that they participate in every political activity asked on the CES, which is not surprising. What’s most interesting, however, is the relative consistency of the effect: whether it’s attending a protest, signing a petition, or donating to a campaign, the coefficient is positive and statistically significant for nearly all activities across partisan groups. This suggests that running for office doesn’t just correlate with one specific mode of participation, but rather signals a broader engagement across the civic landscape.

Those who ran for office generally trust the government more and also behave differently when it comes to political action. How do they feel about issues such as the economy? Do they continue to trust in the institutions and are optimistic or are they running because they see a problem they wish to better? The Cooperative Election Study asks about economic perception and I once again compared those who ran for office with those who didn’t.

As the plot shows, those who ran for office rate the economy as “much better” almost twice as much as those who did not run for office. This finding aligns with the data concerning these individuals’ trust in government, as those who seek to hold political positions seem to be inherently more optimistic and supportive of institutions.

Despite the fact that many legislators in Massachusetts and beyond seem to be lamenting their lack of trust in the Federal government, these findings show that elected officials are generally supportive of the institutions they seek to govern and choose to participate in political activity out of a desire to uphold those institutions.

Of course, none of this discounts the frustrations that legislators, activists, and everyday Americans have voiced about government dysfunction or political polarization. But at a time when public discourse often centers on distrust, polarization, and democratic decline, it’s important to find that those who choose to participate at the highest levels of politics often trust, respect, and believe in the institutions they seek to lead.

As political debates continue to swirl around trust in elections, faith in government, and the future of American democracy, understanding the mindset of those who run for office gives us reason for cautious optimism. Democracy’s health may not solely depend on the public’s faith in government, it may also depend on the trust of those willing to serve.