Trust in the military on the rise, but still below pre-pandemic levels

Public trust in the military rose slightly in the last year and remains significantly higher than most other civic institutions, according to results from the annual Reagan National Defense Survey released Thursday.

More than half of the individuals polled in the report — 51% — said they have a great deal of trust in the armed forces. That’s up from 46% last year, the lowest level since survey administrators began polling on the topic in 2018.

Faith in the military easily outpaced trust in the White House (22%), the Supreme Court (21%) and Congress (9%). It also easily exceeded trust in police and law enforcement institutions, which rose to 34% in this year’s report.

The survey is based on responses from roughly 2,500 Americans polled in the week after the November presidential election. Report authors said they are hopeful the results indicate growing levels of public support for the Defense Department, after several years of declining confidence in the institution.

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“The number fell from 70% [in 2018] all the way down to 45% [in 2021], but what you can see now is that that trend seems to have stabilized,” said Rachel Hoff, the Reagan Institute’s policy director.

“Several years ago, when we started to really dig into the decline in confidence, it all had to do with politicization. Americans on the right thought the military was too woke. Americans on the left thought the military was full of extremists. And both on both sides of the aisle, people thought the military’s leadership was politicized.”

Researchers found that confidence in the military increased last year across all age, race and partisan demographics. Roughly 56% of Donald Trump voters and 50% of Kamala Harris voters expressed high confidence in the institution.

Still, 54% of those surveyed said they would not be willing to personally serve in the military, on par with 56% of respondents from last year.

Even with those reservations, 79% of individuals surveyed said they would support increasing military spending in future federal budgets, the highest figure recorded in the survey’s past eight years.

That mark was higher than issues like border security (75%) and foreign aid (43%) but trailed behind public infrastructure (89%), Social Security (89%) and education (83%).

The full survey results are available at the Ronald Reagan Institute’s website.