Declining Trust in Our Government Is the American people's trust in our government declining? According to most people, it definitely is. Recent polls make this argument very valid. In 1995, the Princeton Survey Research Associates conducted a telephone interview of 1514 random sample adults. In this interview, people were asked how much of the time they trusted in the federal government to do the right thing. Twenty-one percent said most of the time and seventy-one percent said only some of the time. When asked the same question of their state governments, the results were only slightly better. Thirty percent said most of the time