Confidence in Institutions

Gallup reports Military Again Tops "Confidence in Institutions" List

Gallup's 2005 update of Americans' confidence in institutions finds the military, once again, head and shoulders above the competition. The police and organized religion rank second and third, respectively, on this year's list, while HMOs have secured their spot at the bottom of the list. Americans have lower confidence today than they did a year ago in the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Television news receives its lowest ratings in trends dating to 1993.

It is a little hard to read the graphic, but the sequence is Military (74%), Police (63%), Organized Religion (53%), Banks (49%), Presidency (44%), Medical System (42%), Supreme Court (41%), Public Schools (37%), Television News (28%), Newspapers (28%), Criminal Justice (26%), Organized Labor (24%), Congress (22%), Big Business (22%), HMOs (17%)

My ranking would be somewhat different: God (100%), Military (90%), Presidency (90%), Police (80%), Supreme Court (60%), Criminal Justice (60%), Congress (50%), Big Business (50%), Organized Religion (50%), Banks (50%), Medical System (40%), Public Schools (20%), Television News (15%), Newspapers (15%), Organized Labor (10%), HMOs (5%)

Gerry @DalyThoughts blogged The top five (numbers in parentheses are “a great deal of confidence", “quite a lot", “some", and “very little"):

The Military (42-32-18-7)
The Police (28-35-29-7)
The Church or Organized Religion (31-22-28-16)
Banks (22-27-39-11)
The Presidency (21-23-27-25)

And the bottom five:
HMOs (7-10-43-35)
Big Business (8-14-45-29)
Congress (8-14-51-25)
Organized Labor (12-12-47-23)
The Criminal Justice System (9-17-45-26)

Gallup points out that the ratings for the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court (16-25-38-18) are all down from 2004.