Gallup: 89% Say Government Corruption Is Widespread

A record 89% of U.S. adults say corruption is widespread in the American government, the highest figure Gallup has recorded in 20 years.

The number is up 10 percentage points from last year and far above the 72%-to-79% band that held from 2010 through 2025.

Gallup published the result on September 2. It is based on telephone interviews conducted May 1 to June 10, 2026, with a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults aged 15 and older, with a margin of sampling error of ±4.1 percentage points.

The Partisan Breakdown

Democrats moved the most. In Joe Biden's final year in office, 57% of Democrats said government corruption was widespread. That rose to 76% in 2025, the first year of Donald Trump's second term, and hit 91% this year.

Independents are at 90%, up 12 points since 2024 — closer to Democrats than to Republicans.

Republicans are at 83%. Their number has moved far less: 87% said corruption was widespread in 2024, and about eight in 10 have said so in each of the past two years.

Gallup's own read: it is the near-convergence of the two parties — with Democrats now only marginally higher than Republicans — that pushed the overall figure to a record.

How the U.S. Compares

Across the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the median share saying corruption is widespread in their government has fallen from 69% in 2009 to below 60% since 2022. The 2025 median was 59%.

Gallup says full 2026 data collection is not complete in every country, so 2025 remains the cleanest comparison — and the gap could widen further once the rest comes in.

Since 2023, only four of the 132 countries where Gallup asks the question annually have scored nominally above this year's U.S. figure: Lebanon in 2024 (92%), Peru in 2025 (92%), and Ghana and Nigeria in 2024 (both 90%).