Faculty Sponsor: Professor Dierker
Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Abstract: The American people’s trust in the US governmental system has been steadily declining since its initial drop in the 1960s (Intawan & Nicholson, 2018). By 2020, with the impact of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic, the rage of this steady decline has shown a sharp increase; with the people’s trust in the federal government declining at a rate of approximately 29% (Suhay, et. al., 2022). This is unsurprising given the variety of factors influencing distrust in government including; the polarizing zeal of the Trump Presidency, the COVID Pandemic, and rising awareness of police brutality (Kreiger, 2020). Among the many reasons behind declining trust in government, the most common is an individual’s perception of the government as unable or unwilling to protect their interests (Suhay, et. al., 2022), which is a common perception when one’s party of choice is not in political power (Suhay, et. al., 2022). However, there is a notable difference in levels of trust in the incumbent government and levels of trust with the greater democratic process (Intawan & Nicholson, 2018). Thus, with this study, I attempt to explore the association between both party identification (Democrat, Republican and Moderate) and political ideology (Liberal, Conservative, and Moderate), and individual levels of satisfaction with the democratic process. My research revealed that the political ideological group least satisfied with the democratic process is Liberal Independents. Furthermore, Republicans scored most similarly in regards to their satisfaction levels across political ideologies as compared to Democrats and Independents.
My-Project-QAC201-3