Perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. have reached a record high, according to a new Gallup poll.
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Eighty-nine percent of U.S. adults said government corruption is widespread – up 10 percentage points from last year to the highest level Gallup has recorded in 20 years.
The new numbers are also substantially higher than in the recent past. From 2010 to 2025, those who said they believed the government was plagued by widespread corruption ranged between 72% and 79%. Democrats this year are leading the surge, with 91% saying they perceive widespread government corruption. Independents are not far behind at 90%, up 12 percentage points since 2024.
Republicans’ views have remained consistent, with 8 in 10 saying corruption is widespread, very similar to the 87% recorded in 2024. While both sides of the aisle agree that government corruption is prevalent, they cite different reasons.
Democrats’ perceptions fluctuate depending on which party is in the White House. When former President Joe Biden was in office, fewer Democrats perceived government corruption than when President Donald Trump got elected. Republicans’ perceptions are more consistent across the political spectrum.
“On the one side, there is a strong drumbeat from Democrats calling out the president’s corruption and his actions,” says Gary Kalman, the director of the U.S. office at Transparency International. On the flip side, you have the president and the Republicans talking about how there is corruption on the other side and the reason that the president needs to act so boldly in their opinion is because the Democrats have been corrupting the system for so long.”
The U.S. perceptions of government corruption have outpaced those in most other countries, including advanced economies. Gallup polled the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and found that the median level of perceived corruption among the countries dropped from 69% in 2009 to 60% in 2022.
In a 2025 Gallup poll of OECD nations, a median of 59% of respondents said corruption was widespread in their government. However, the low figures across OECD countries were not always the norm. Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic all recorded perceived government corruption levels above 90% when Gallup first tracked the metric. Over time, perceived corruption in those countries has decreased, moving the U.S. to the top of the rankings for the first time.
“We have unprecedented actions by the U.S. president and this government that are in fact corrupt, right? By that, I mean the strict definition of using public authority for private gain, right?” Kalman says. “In reality, there’s corruption. And then you look at Europe, and you don’t hear a lot of stories about corruption.”
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In 2025, polling revealed a 20-point gap between the U.S. and OECD countries on the metric. U.S. perceptions of corruption rose to 79% compared with 59% across the OECD nations.
Since 2023, only four of the 132 countries Gallup polled have had higher corruption scores than the 89% recorded by the U.S. this year: Lebanon at 92% in 2024, Peru at 92% in 2025, and Ghana and Nigeria at 90% in 2024.
Gallup polls about corruption in government and business each year. The two are usually aligned – people who believe there is corruption in their national government typically believe the same about business.
However, the U.S. bucks this trend. While Americans’ perceptions of business corruption have increased eight points to 71%, it is still 18 points lower than the perceptions of government corruption.
“When you look at the problems facing the country right now, I think what they’re seeing is the government ignoring it,” Kalman says. “People look at inflation, and they don’t say, ‘Oh, you know, Amazon’s jacking up its prices.’ They’re going, ‘Oh, the tariffs and the war are jacking up my prices.’”
Since Gallup started tracking the numbers in 2006, few countries have recorded larger gaps between government and business corruption than the current U.S. gap.
The survey, conducted May 1 to June 10 of 1,000 adults, has a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.
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