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High Point poll finds low support for federal government branches

A recent High Point University poll found low approval ratings for national government institutions.

The survey of just over 1,000 North Carolinians found President Joe Biden’s approval rating underwater at 37 percent. But that was higher than for Congress — at 16 percent – and even the U.S. Supreme Court’s approval of 28 percent.

Asher Hildebrand is with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He says the low figures point to the need to rebuild trust in government as a necessary means of collective action.

“We have to reclaim the vision of a government that works for the people, that is accessible to the people, and that is responsive to their needs," he says. "When people in general, young people especially lose sight of that vision then we’re really in trouble as a country.”

Hildebrand says trust in elective offices has been declining for decades but the low approval of the Supreme Court is a relatively new phenomenon. He says in the past many people have considered the court above the political fray but that may have changed because of recent decisions and controversies.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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