A record 89% of Americans recently said in a Gallup poll that corruption is widespread in their government, with Republicans, Democrats and independents all in agreement — their responses ranged between 83% and 91%. That marks a significant increase from the 73% recorded in Gallup's polling in 2024, and a record high for the question in the United States.

The level of concern in the United States is now among the highest recorded globally. Of the 132 countries Gallup has surveyed on the question since 2023, only four have recorded higher overall levels of concern: Lebanon and Peru (both 92%), and Ghana and Nigeria (both 90%).

Corruption has also emerged as a leading concern even as cost-of-living issues have defined much of the recent campaign rhetoric. A recent Fox News Poll found that concern about corruption in government (88%) ranked higher among voters than inflation (85%) or gas prices (83%). A CNBC survey similarly identified government corruption as the most important issue facing the country, above any concern about the economy.

The theme has also become a fixture of campaign advertising. According to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, of the US$11.6 billion that will be spent on political advertising this election cycle, more than US$275 million has gone to corruption-themed ads — around US$173 million from Democrats and US$93 million from Republicans.

Who do Americans blame?

Democrats have pointed to the unprecedented gifts from foreign governments to the Trump family and the massive expansion of Trump family wealth during Donald Trump's second presidential term. Yet Americans are by no means blaming the Trump administration exclusively for corruption.

When the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights organisation, asked a representative sample of 2,000 Americans this year whether certain individuals or institutions were corrupt, respondents expressed negative views across the political spectrum — including of Congress (85%), Trump (68%), Joe Biden (63%) and the Supreme Court (62%).

Asked whether the problem is one of individuals making unethical choices or one “deeply embedded in the institutions of the US government”, about two-thirds of respondents chose the latter. Only 7% said they were not concerned about corruption influencing elected officials.

Nor does this appear to be a new phenomenon. Trust in American politicians, political parties, the news media, government institutions and even “the American people” has been declining since Gallup began polling on the issue in the 1970s, and hit record lows in recent years. While 86% of Americans trusted the American people in 1976, today barely half do.

Gallup's findings add a further nuance: the gap between Americans' perceptions of corruption in government (89%) and corruption in business (71%) is strikingly large, and the survey notes that few countries have gaps this wide.

Notably, this public perception of corruption does not trickle down to local politics. In another survey, this one by YouGov, far more respondents deemed US senators and representatives to be corrupt (75%) than mid- or low-level government workers (39%).

That distinction points to an important reason why such high levels of distrust in institutions have not produced more unrest: Americans still appear to trust their local governments. That has largely not changed since Gallup first polled on the topic more than 50 years ago. Today, two-thirds of Americans trust their local government — slightly higher than the 63% who did in 1972. On the whole, Americans also retain trust in the ability of elections, including the midterms, to act as political circuit breakers.

What about the midterms?

Candidates running for office this year have taken note of the deep voter distrust of Washington elites, parties and institutions. One need only watch a few of the many viral political ads this campaign to see a well-worn script: candidates blame Washington insiders for corruption and other problems while touting their local bona fides.

It should come as no surprise, then, that many candidates are eschewing party labels altogether, often going so far as to criticise their own party.

But this is not the first time politicians of all stripes have appeared keen to distance themselves from the ruling class, and from political insiders viewed as corrupt and detached from the everyday realities of most Americans. After all, with the exceptions of Biden and George H.W. Bush — both former vice presidents who served under popular two-term presidents — every US president of the last half century has arrived in the Oval Office with fewer than five years of experience in Washington, if any.

Americans have largely been against Washington insiders for decades, particularly when economic anxiety is high. What is different in this year's midterm elections is how many candidates are trying to fuse corruption with that economic anxiety. Not since the 2006 midterm elections has corruption been such a prominent theme in an election — a cycle that ended with Democrats winning control of both chambers of Congress.

James Talarico, the Democratic hopeful for the Senate in Texas, has said on the campaign trail: “we have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis”. In Georgia, Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff routinely tells voters “corruption is why things don't work for ordinary people.”

These Democratic efforts follow parallel attempts by Republicans to portray Democrats as the more corrupt party, one that costs American taxpayers money. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, for instance, sought to target what it called “waste, fraud and abuse”. Republicans in Minnesota, meanwhile, have highlighted a welfare-fraud scandal that essentially forced Democratic Governor Tim Walz to abandon his plans for a third term of office.

It remains unclear whether these sorts of accusations will inspire the political backlash that other issues — namely abortion, immigration and the economy — have sparked in past elections. Democrats do, however, hold one advantage in the midterms: recent polling shows they are seen as the preferred party to fight corruption by 10 percentage points. That helps explain why they are spending nearly twice as much on corruption-themed ads as Republicans.

Yet should Democrats succeed and take control of Congress, they will be expected to act on the issue — and not simply become part of the ongoing problem. Either way, Election Day offers a direct test of a tension running through this year's polling: Americans overwhelmingly distrust national institutions, yet still trust elections to act as political circuit breakers.

This article was written by Jared Mondschein, Director of Research at the US Studies Centre, University of Sydney. It is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.