Perceptions of government corruption at record high: Gallup

A new poll released Wednesday showed that Americans’ perception of corruption in the U.S. government has hit a record high.

The survey, conducted by Gallup , found that 89 percent of respondents answered affirmatively to the question, “Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not?” That number was up 10 percentage points from 2025 and marked the highest percentage since the survey started in 2006.

“This ought to concern all Americans,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Wednesday on the social platform X about the poll.

A University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Wednesday showed similar results, finding 97 percent of respondents believed at least some corruption exists within the government.

Gallup found 83 percent of Republican respondents believed there was corruption in government, which is down 4 points from 2024, during the Biden administration. The number had already dropped to 81 percent in 2025, after President Trump took office.

The figures among independents and Democratic respondents, however, surged to 90 and 91 percent, respectively. Fifty-seven percent of Democrats said they thought corruption was widespread in the U.S. government in 2024, and that rate rose to 76 percent last year.

Perceived corruption in U.S. businesses also increased by 8 percentage points, from 63 percent in 2025 to 71 percent in 2026. This was the largest gap between the two types of corruption seen in the U.S., as surveyed by Gallup.

Compared with others, the U.S.’s median level of perceived corruption in 2025 was 20 points higher than the median for member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Gallup notes that full data collection for 2026 is not yet complete in all OECD members.

Only four out of 132 countries surveyed by Gallup since 2023 have exceeded the U.S. 2026 score: Lebanon at 92 percent in 2024, Peru at 92 percent in 2025, and Ghana and Nigeria both at 90 percent in 2024.

Gallup surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults aged 15 and older, and the poll was conducted between May 1 and June 10. The margin of error was 4.1 percentage points.