Sociologist Claude Fischer writes:
Polarization has been less a matter of Americans becoming extremists—most remain centrists or oblivious to politics—but more that politically engaged Americans have increasingly aligned their views, values, and even their practices, from where they live to what they drive to where they pray, with their politics.
He continues:
Both the surveys and the administrative data that researchers use to track polarization are increasingly distorted by polarization itself. . . .
Looking at polls taken over the years is the major way researchers observe trends in polarization. . . . Polling, however, has become extremely difficult. The percentage of Americans who agree to be polled has plummeted even for the best survey organizations and government agencies. The respected AP-NORC collaboration just reported a poll with “a cumulative response rate of 2.5%.” This trend partly reflects polling fatigue and partly political fatigue. In a 2023 Pew survey, 65% of respondents said that “they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics.” . . . Polarization itself shapes response rates. People who participate tend to be more partisan, more connected, and more informed and, so, more polarized, giving us overestimates of polarization. At the same time, reports of polarization in the polls seem to feed people’s sense that America is dividing into camps and in that way they increase future partisanship. . . .
Polarization also affects the answers respondents give. . . . partisans succumb to “motivated reasoning,” adopting and reporting their side’s supposed “facts.” For example, partisans believe and report that the economy is doing well if their party holds the White House, but believe and report that it is doing poorly if the other side holds the White House. . . . Some survey respondents even lean in to polarization by making assertions that they probably do not believe just to make a rhetorical point . . .
Fewer Americans are getting news through traditional journalism, if getting news at all. Perhaps as cause or as effect of this, American news media’s language has become much more negative in tone since 2000, especially since 2010: angrier, sadder, more disgusted. . . .
Other ways of assessing polarization are also being distorted by polarization . . . Voting data are increasingly affected by hyper-partisanship . . . threats against election officials and challenges to voter lists; finely-targeted, data-driven get-out-the-vote campaigns; misinformation online and in text message campaigns . . . Political partisanship is distorting census data as well. . . .
In summary:
American political polarization seems to have accelerated in ways making it harder for us to assess its acceleration.
20 year ago, some colleagues and I started a project on political polarization, culminating in our book Red State Blue State. We thought polarization was extreme then, but it’s only gotten worse (or better, I suppose some people might say).
One thing that’s been bugging me on all this is that political polarization as we see it now in the United States seems like it should be inherently unstable. Polarization is not based on voters being loyal to their own parties, so much as voters hating the other party. Most people don’t like Democrats or Republicans, and the motivation comes from voting against the other side. This does not seem like a stable equilibrium: you’d think there’d be an opening for a third party or, if that’s too difficult in our winner-take-all elections, that one or both major parties could split. But that hasn’t happened yet.
“that’s too difficult in our winner-take-all elections, that one or both major parties could split”
Or, when segments of the population look like they’re splitting away from a given party, that party reacts by shifting to absorb them back. It’s happened twice recently to the Republicans (2010 with the Tea Party) and 2016 (with Trump). It’s happened once with the Democrats (2020 with the Floyd protests). In all cases, once the voters had made their preferences clear, the parties shifted to their preferred stances, even at the cost of losing other voters (anti-Trump Republicans; moderate Dems)
I don’t think the Democratic party really shifted much (if at all) in 2020. Their candidate was Joe Biden, the decades-long party member who was VP in 2008-2016. So, 2020 was a year of continuity for the Democratic party.
Like always when this comes up, I would be fascinated to hear how, structurally, a third party or party split would actually successfully happen outside of a major catastrophe.
Trigger warning! Doomsday talk below.
The more I read and hear about what people are thinking, the more I am struck by the lack of intelligence (I don’t mean IQ but common sense and logic) in the American population (I won’t speak about other countries, although some seem to have similar conditions). People “believe” all sorts of things that they cannot possibly “know.” The lack of logic in their statements is truly astounding. I am starting to think that one reason the 2 party system seems so entrenched, despite the disparity between what Andrew says above about extreme party views vs more centrist public views, is that the public has neither the capability nor time nor will to think about things in any detail. It is much simpler to just declare your tribe and follow blindly. If you feel powerless and stressed for time, then there is little point to trying to see whether it’s logical to believe large numbers of illegal aliens would want to risk voting or whether throwing larger tax credits at every voting block is affordable or productive. I’m trying to be even-handed here because I think my concerns apply equally to both party’s loyal followers (though I admittedly find one side worse than the other).
The public forum has devolved considerably. Sure, Trump berates, belittles, and dehumanizes rather than addressing serious issues. But the Democratic response appears to be throw money at any group whose favor they might be able to garner. Politics has become simply self-interest played through power an other people’s money. The idea that politicians are public servants and that voters should think about the reasons for public policy has all but evaporated. Politics has become purely transactional. Elevated discussion and the relevance of truth has mostly disappeared.
I think polarization is a symptom not a cause. What exactly is it a symptom of? I’m thinking it is a symptom of a public that no longer has the ability or interest to think about issues and varied values and experiences. A public that has lost interest in any search for truth – and a technological environment that has increasingly made such a search futile.
I warned you: doomsday ahead. But every day leaves me more despondent about politics. At this point, much as I’d like to see a third party, I’m not sure if that would change much.
When Dale Lehman says, “doomsday ahead,” he is being too optimistic. I personally am reduced to a twitching heap. In addition, my wife is out demonstrating and testifying, leading me to fear collateral damage as well. Oh for the good old days of the Red Menace and its major issue back then–if and whether to allow neighbors into our nuclear bomb shelter.
Me, too. Heather Cox Richardson has a relevant Orwell quote today: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
What conclusions are supposed to follow from the evidence of your eyes and ears, though? All too often, people make hasty generalizations from what they’ve personally observed. (E.g., “Someone got robbed here–crime rates are skyrocketing!”) I submit that some caution with that sort of “evidence” is actually in order.
> what they’ve personally observed. (E.g., “Someone got robbed here–crime rates are skyrocketing!”)
But that’s not what is happening now. People are *not* personally observing voter fraud or increased crime or gangs taking control of cities or immigrants eating pets. They are being told those things by people who also did not personally observe any of those things either—that’s called a “lie”.
That’s the problem—people can verify that these statements are lies. They can do so via their own observation and, as Dale says, some degree of common sense. People are choosing instead to reject that evidence in favor of what they are told.
> People “believe” all sorts of things that they cannot possibly “know.”
But below this line a bunch of stuff is listed that was obvious at least decades (really, millenia) ago as if it is a new realization.
Have you seen the latest thing of politicians doing Doritos product placements? That one does seem new.
Presidential politics is close to being just more content to sell ads at this point.
I, too, am flabbergasted and disturbed by what people believe, or claim to believe. As I think I’ve mentioned in blog comments before — and of course I expect everyone here to have read all of my blog comments and to remember them! — I don’t even know how to interpret a claim that x% of people believe Trump won the 2020 election, or that y% believe global warming is a hoax perpetrated by scientists pimping for money. Do they _really_ think these things are true, or do they just think they might be true, or do they not care one way or another but they want to be recorded as having this belief because it supports their politics, or… I dunno, I guess there are a lot of possibilities.
Most of the worst examples I can think of are on the Republican side, among Trump’s followers — Trump won, that global warming is a hoax, Haitian asylum-seekers are eating people’s pets, and on and on and on (and on and on). Trump says a lot of stuff that is false, often obviously false, and his followers believe it or claim to believe it. But it’s not like people with other politics are immune. I knew some lefties who went really far down the 9/11 Truther rabbit hole: Dick Cheney arranged the 9/11 attacks, the towers were brought down by explosives that had been pre-planted rather than by the plane crashes, yada yada.
I was born in 1965 and can only comment from personal memory based on events from about 1980 onward, but at least over that period things are far, far worse than they ever were before, as far as people believing all sorts of politicized nonsense. I’d love to believe it’s due to temporary factors — the weird appeal Trump has for some people, maybe coupled with some thread of misinformation-mongering that started in the W administration (“we make our own reality”) — and that the pendulum will swing back at some point. But I fear there are other changes in society that have brought this about and that are not going to go away. For example, as many people have pointed out for many years, rather than a shared trusted news source or small set of news sources — like good ol’ Walter Cronkite — people now pick their own source of news…and those news sources can themselves be sources of misinformation. And then social media came along, facilitating peoples’ desire to interact primarily with people who share their values and beliefs (and thus reducing exposure to other people’s values and beliefs). Neither the fragmentation of news nor the fragmentation of social interactions are going to be undone, so if these are partly responsible for so many people buying into nutty world-views, I’m afraid we are going to have to live with this phenomenon pretty much forever. It’s very depressing.
Another thing that has changed is education – rather, the lack thereof. The best and brightest may (arguably) have a better education than in the past. But the masses are woefully uneducated. The causes are many, as are the consequences.
I’ll mention one potential cause which doesn’t get much attention – and which is debatable. Mass education used to seem to match the needs of the economy: standardization, and work habits to support a manufacturing assembly-line economy (I’m thinking of 60+ years ago). Who does it serve to have an uneducated public? Big business seems to thrive on consumers who only know how to press buttons (especially the “buy now” button), and don’t probe much with questions. I don’t think it is a conscious conspiracy, but our current lack-of-education system does seem to match the needs of our present digital large business economy. Critical thinking is not something the current economy needs (at least not the successful parts of that economy). My superficial knowledge of sociology suggests this is a worthwhile link to investigate. Unless, of course, you are in Florida where the board overseeing higher education is attempting to remove sociology from the curriculum (thus far, only from the general education curriculum).
And yet the number of people who have graduated with at least a Bachelor’s degree is at an all time high right?
But the content and rigor of these degrees is substantially below what it was 20-30 years ago imho. At least in 2012 or so while I was TAing engineering students the variance was huge, some exceptionally good, and some substantial number just interested in collecting rent from their sheepskin, not in actually knowing the material.
When I look at the school my own kids are attending now (middle-high combined public school with IB program), it’s pretty good. But the one they were attending last year had major problems.
Somehow even as we have more educational consumption, educational quality has isolated into two modes. The same high performing students are there, and then a mass of lower quality education for the purpose of sucking down govt subsidies and such for the “masses”.
The world has need for Bob Carpenters and Daniel Lakelands – but only for a few. In today’s economy, it works best when you have a few of those and a mass of consumers ready to buy your product/service with few questions asked – unless they are questions that your AI (programmed by the above or their rough equivalents) is programmed to respond to. In fact, the training required is for consumers to ask such questions – don’t go beyond what the AI is equipped to respond to. Is it an accident that our educational system seems geared to produce these masses along with a topping of brilliant talent to create those AIs? I find that an interesting question.
Phil writes: “I fear there are other changes in society that have brought this about and that are not going to go away.” So, what are they? I agree that the algorithms that generate peoples’ news feeds are a problem, but I can think of four other factors: economic change, demographic change, cultural change, and economic change. I was brought up to look for the material factors underlying social trends, so I think that increasing economic inequality underlies much of the anxiety that makes authoritarianism attractive. People assess their situations relative to other peoples,’ so they feel that they are falling behind even if they are better off on some absolute scale.
Beyond that, non-hispanic whites are now a shrinking majority of the population, which generates anxiety some, as does the increasing acceptance of gays and the increasing visibility of gender dysphoria. But, I think that people would find these things less threatening if they felt better off economically.
The nice thing about economic instability (for the purposes of the fascist/authoritarians) is that they cause it, and yet it makes people cling to them more … A virtuous cycle for the would be dictators.
“…So, what are they? …”
Increased amounts of diversity.
> People “believe” all sorts of things that they cannot possibly “know.”
Can you give some examples of these things?
“knowing that Trump won”
for that matter, “knowing that Biden won” (although there is certainly more evidence for that)
“knowing that Haitians have or haven’t eaten people’s pets” (although, again, there is more evidence for the latter)
“knowing that there are millions of undocumented aliens that came into the country the past 4 years”
“knowing that a large number of these are…..”
Virtually everything that people say, they can’t possibly “know.” That goes for the politicians as well. The reality is that we can only “believe” things and to the extent there is evidence, that should affect our beliefs. For too many people, their belief is based on the evidence that people have said something.
Are you suggesting that people know these things? The old movie “Wag the Dog” was ahead of its time. Could an administration stage a war without it really happening? It is possible, though the coordination required to pull that off without the truth leaking out is hard to buy – less true in some places, however, as I’m not sure what Russians really “know” about the war in Ukraine.
I feel like you’re being pedantic about “know” vs “believe”. Right now, I know there’s beer in my fridge. I put it there yesterday. My recollection is the evidence. Then again, maybe a cat burglar came in and stole the beer without me knowing. Maybe we’re all brains in a tank and nothing, not even the fridge, is real. So, really, I just “believe” I put beer in the fridge.
In colloquial terms, people don’t make much of a distinction between “know” and “believe”. Maybe they should, or maybe it’s too much trouble on a day-to-day basis.
But the most important thing is that you are gratuitously both-sidesing this issue. When it comes to a complex topic like “Policy X had Y effect on the economy”, I suppose people should be mindful of their degree of confidence (lots of stuff can affect the economy, which is big and complex, and there’s no controlled experiments so cause and effect are difficult to determine). When it comes to contrasting statements like “Haitians ate people’s pets” or “Haitians didn’t eat people’s pets”, one is outlandish and hateful and the other isn’t. It’s no time for solipsism.
You mean like immigrants are eating their neighbor’s cats, that Harris is not actually black, that Trump has inappropriate relations with his daughter. All of those could be true, but would be BIG if true. But in that case, the burden should be on the people claiming these things to provide evidence.
I agree with that. My efforts to be even-handed were to point out that belief has morphed into knowledge for too many people – on all sides. Sure the Republicans are more guilty and in a more serious way, but many Democrats also blend their belief into fact too readily, in my opinion. Given how much disinformation is out there, and how rapidly this will get worse, I think it is dangerous for anyone to say they “know” things that they cannot possibly be sure about. For the 2020 election, I learned about many imperfections in how votes are cast and counted. Massive evidence was presented in numerous court cases, much of which did not stand up to scrutiny. I feel safe in saying I “know” there was no massive vote fraud. I am less comfortable quantifying how many vote irregularities occurred. If the election had been closer, that would be a more serious issue.
This time might be closer. But this time, I think the severity of distortions due to election ID laws, fear of violence, and issues related to hand counting votes are likely to outweigh any purported attempts to cast illegal votes. I’m basing that on logic, not known facts. It disturbs me how little we can actually “know” about the frequency of these things – not that we ever were sure, but there was a degree of trust which is not there any longer. So it seems ironic to me to hear people say they trust what Trump says – of all the sources to trust, that is the most unreliable one I can think of. I agree that these things that people trust about Trump are seriously harmful and dangerous. But I do see many Democrats trusting things that they should probably have a more open mind about. For example, how independent is the DOJ? While I reject the claims that they have been weaponized against Trump, I’m not as sure that they are above political influence.
Since I can’t reply to Dale’s comment below I’ll just add it here. I agree Republicans are more transparent, but in some ways it makes them more harmless. The beliefs Democrats have instead aren’t so crazy sounding, such as the ubiquity of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. I think there is a lot of truth in it, but to blame everything on identity matters is counterproductive.
Those aren’t the particular concerns I have. The ones that worry me more are the neoliberal economics and technocratic government assumptions. That for example modern capitalism is the best of all possible worlds, that technocrats adjusting the interest rates and creating specialized tax credits and fiddling around in the FDA and Dept of Education will result in good outcomes that benefit everyday people, that failures of these systems are evidence of both insufficient budget and bad actors in the GOP undermining what would have otherwise been largely a utopia. That we could solve problems like violence, police brutality, homelessness, etc by top down federal policy if only people would vote harder for the right groups. That NIH funded research is creating amazing improvements in health outcomes, etc etc.
That there’s ubiquitous racism, sexism, homophobia, etc is fairly obvious to me, but it’s also fairly obvious to me that these are the topics put forward to distract from the fact that for 50 years we’ve had a steadily failing economic system, that even federal reserve economists don’t know how money works, that tax policy and economic policy has been set up to create and nurture oligarchy, that the top 1% of households worldwide own something close to 50% of the worlds assets (43% according to this: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/top-1-percent-of-households-own-43-percent-of-global-wealth-42134 ) that spending heavily on education since 1995 and especially 2010 created a less well educated more manipulatable population with a bigger wealth divide and more student loan based economic control over the general population. That even a wealthy white person in the US has a life expectancy exceeded by a poor person in a typical european country (say Netherlands or Germany) that our government spy agencies invested heavily into the tech industry to create the “surveillance economy” and are able to bypass surveillance laws by simply buying commercial datasets… etc etc.
The Democrats seem to not just say but even believe that they are virtuous warriors for the good of the people and that everything bad comes from evil GOP, while they actively put forward policies pretty much guaranteed to cause suffering for everyone below the 99%tile of wealth.
I’m being mindful of the don’t go on repeatedly about common topics suggestion. So I’ll just say that our entire govt seems to me like fish living in polluted water who can’t see that it’s the stuff ubiquitously around us that’s bad because that’s the way it’s always been.
Kevin Williamson has what I think is a pretty good theory here:
“I have a theory about this, the rough outline of which is this: Americans are more sensitive to certain incentives than are many of the world’s other peoples, and our general competitiveness causes us to respond to social and reputational incentives in areas such as art and science, where economic incentives may not be particularly strong. But even as our newfound idiotic tribalism causes us to regard people “on the other side” as our enemies, our thoroughly sorted social lives ensure that most of us do not spend very much time actually interacting with people who hold different political views. Slather on top of that the ethos of the cult of democracy, which holds that all points of view, no matter how insipid or ignorant, are entitled to a measure of respect as part of our unwritten constitution. The upshot is that there is, for most Americans, no real price to pay for having stupid or wicked political affiliations. As an engineer friend of mine likes to say: “Stupid should hurt.” In the matter of American politics, stupid doesn’t hurt as much as it should—the fact that we are rich, domestically secure, and blessed with an extraordinarily useful constitutional architecture left to us as a legacy by better men protects us from the worst results of this era’s dumb and malicious politics.
For now.”
The last three NYT/Sienna national polls show the following:
July poll: 4% of Republicans support Harris. 4% of Republicans say they voted for Biden in 2020.
September poll: 5% of Republicans support Harris. 6% of Republicans say they voted for Biden in 2020.
October poll: 9% of Republicans support Harris. 9% of Republicans say they voted for Biden in 2020.
A large-sample Pew poll taken right after the 2020 election shows 6% of Republicans saying they voted for Biden. Some of those Republicans no longer consider themselves Republicans. (“Republican” in national polls is based on asking people what party they identify with or lean to, not on voter registration.)
This is not sampling error. If you assume the true number is 6% or 7%, getting 4% and then 9% is around a 4-sigma event. If less than 6%, even rarer.
I can think of several possible explanations for this (probably a mixture of several), but none of them is particularly encouraging for the ability of the poll to predict election outcome.
Very interesting. Different people? Different feelings? Different memories?
I agree with your assessment. Do you happen to have the comparable figures for Democratic voters?
Hasn’t, accurately quantifying party identification been a known problem in polling? Seems to me that people have been saying for a long time that party ID has been very fickle.
Most polls weight on 2020 presidential vote and/or party ID. That makes a difference in results – see this excellent article by the Times’ pollster.https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-election.html
If party ID is fickle, and even more if people’s reported 2020 vote is fickle – which these data strongly indicate at least one of which is true – there’s a big problem here.
Ben:
There’s evidence that adjusting for party id helps; see these references:
2001: Post-stratification without population level information on the post-stratifying variable, with application to political polling
2016: The mythical swing voter
2016: Trump’s Up 3! Clinton’s Up 9! Why you shouldn’t be fooled by polling bounces
2016: We gave four good pollsters the same raw data. They had four different results.
Are you sure about that “four-sigma” calculation? First of all, I wouldn’t call this a single event at all–I’d say each poll is a separate event. Secondly, a statement like “9% of Republicans support Harris” isn’t the same as “9% of respondents are Republicans who support Harris.” When you’re talking about a subsample of a subsample, the statistical error will be magnified.
Andrew –
This does not seem like a stable equilibrium: you’d think there’d be an opening for a third party or, if that’s too difficult in our winner-take-all elections, that one or both major parties could split. But that hasn’t happened yet.
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that a 3rd party or a party split would reduce polarization – or whether you’re just saying you think there’s a logic that the increasing two-party polarization would lead to those alternatives.
If it’s the former, it would be interesting to read your theory of causal mechanism. Relatedly, it would be interesting to see a comparison of associations of polarization and our two-party system, with associations of polarization and multi-party, coalition government systems, or consensus democracy systems, or systems with rank choice voting, etc. I have to think that rather than a third party or a party split, the way to reduce our levels of polarization would be to implement different governing structures.
If the latter, again it would be interesting to read your theory of causal mechanism. Seems to me that the more entrenched a two-party system, the more likely we are to see a equilibrium of polarization without a destabilizing pressure to create a new system.
Finally, I think that changes in media and technology are kind of a wild card here. I’m not sure how to counteract the ways in which those phenomena feed the fires of polarization, independent of governmental structures like the number of parties.
“you’d think there’d be an opening for a third party”
I know nothing about political science, but I wonder:
If Party C nucleates and grows, it’s taking support from the dominant two Parties A and B. If C draws more people from A than B, but is still too small to defeat A or B (having recently started) Party A will tell all its members that C is making it so that B will win, reducing the A-to-C flow. (And they’ll attack C, politics being what it is.) Similarly if C draws more people from B than A, the B to C flow will diminish. One might think this is solvable if we reach the point that C is taking about the same number of people from A and B, but if it’s this close, A and B can easily perceive themselves as the more threatened party (or manipulate perception to this end) to disrupt the balance.
Perhaps Party C has to grow in a large, sudden burst to avoid this.
That’s my feeling. If there’s a coordinated “to hell with all these parties” and there’s some kind of fast growing new party that captures a lot of say both Republicans and Democrats then it could work. Otherwise it’s doomed to feedback loops. I think this could happen if insiders in both parties start working together to create the new party behind the scenes. I don’t think this would improve anything though. The “center” right now isn’t particularly good policy wise either. Its inherently kind of status quo, and so isn’t likely to fix any of the major problems we have. Such as monopolies, oligarchy, regulatory capture, monetary manipulation, war mongering, overly complex and manipulable tax codes, poverty trap welfare systems, incredibly poor healthcare outcomes and healthcare systems, fragile supply chains, etc.
About the barriers facing third parties in the US: True, but we’re seeing similar trends in Europe, where electoral systems are more fluid. There’s a dynamic growth in proto-fascist parties with conspiratorial messages at the expense of the various centrists. They haven’t seized as much power as the MAGA people in the US because European multiparty systems don’t favor the extremist capture of the center-right. But at the same time, we don’t see a way out in Europe that satisfies the craving for a break with the “system” while advancing sane, empirically supported alternatives. There may be readers of this blog who think that the French United Front or Germany’s Wagenknecht Alliance represent this, but I don’t. My own hypothesis is centered on the collapse of the social democratic narrative, which has left the far right with a monopoly on radicalism. (And that collapse has to be explained too, of course.)
But I also agree with a lot that’s been written in this thread on the steady decline of public reason in politics.
Peter –
But I also agree with a lot that’s been written in this thread on the steady decline of public reason in politics.
I don’t know how this could be measured objectively, so I’m curious about a widespread confidence that’s the case.
No doubt we can measure increased polarization across party lines, which reflects the ubiquity of identity-based “motivated reasoning” but I don’t know how much reason there was in politics when it was more hippies versus hardhats compared to Democrats versus Republicans. Joe McCarthy was perhaps a more concretely malevolent authoritarian who fed off of fearing wrong than Donald Trump. And while much is made about the down side of atomization of our informational sphere as compared to the days of Walter Cronkite, there are upsides to the decentralization of information communication and the impact of the Hearst yellow journalism was enormous
That’s a valid question. I’m old enough to have a sense of the uneven quality of political discourse since the mid-60s. I agree there was a lot of nonsense back then, but (1) there was a lot of public debate in which the different sides gave reasons (good, bad or otherwise) for their point of view, (2) experts (again spanning a wide range of thoughtfulness) played a large role, and (3) really crazy views, like the Birchers and the Posse Comitatus, were marginalized. I think it’s gotten a lot worse. Of course, I’d like to test that impression against evidence to see how it holds up, but what would that evidence look like?
Really? Change the model assumptions! From normally distributed to something rooted in the possibility of reaching extreme values.
Marky:
No, polarization happens for discrete survey responses, even binary responses; see discussion of the general issue in my paper with Baldassarri.
Over the last year, I must have heard at least a dozen people saying the response rate for polls is down because people don’t trust pollsters any more, or because they don’t trust political groups, or because they don’t trust institutions in general. I think the real explanation is simpler. People don’t trust random unknown callers. Whoever’s on the other end of the call is much more likely to be a spammer or scammer than a legitimate pollster. And word has gotten out how easy it is to spoof the number the call is coming from. It can look like it comes from Gallup or Pew when it really comes from an out-and-out criminal.
Pollsters had better find some significantly different approaches, or I’m afraid they’re likely to be doomed in the very near future.