Poll: Confidence in Leaders Might Be on the Decline
By Rebecca R. Hastings, SPHR, March 2008

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Americans are more confident about those who lead small businesses than those who head major companies, according to a new Harris Interactive Confidence Poll. At the same time, confidence in leaders of all types of U.S. institutions has declined since the last poll in 2007. The one exception: the U.S. military.

The poll, released Feb. 28, 2008, captured opinions of 1,010 adults on their confidence in the leadership of major educational institutions, organized religion, medicine and the White House.

The 2008 survey finds that overall confidence is headed down, marked by declines in nearly every area and a drop of 9 points in the Harris Interactive Confidence Index to a level of 44—the lowest in 11 years.

Though confidence in small business leaders is high, second only to confidence in military leaders, this year's poll found a drop in confidence in small business leaders from 54 percent to 47 percent.

The other largest declines in the category "great deal of confidence" related to medicine (down the largest amount, from 37 percent to 28 percent) and leadership in the White House (down from 22 percent to 15 percent).

The poll found significant declines in the proportion of people who report a great deal of confidence in:

• Wall Street, down 6 points, from 17 percent to 11 percent.
• Major educational institutions, down from 37 percent to 32 percent.
• The courts and the justice system, down from 21 percent to 16 percent.

Leaders of major educational institutions still ranked comparatively high in confidence levels, ranked third after military and small business leaders.

The lowest levels of confidence were attributed to Congress (where only 8 percent of respondents reported a great deal of confidence), the news media (10 percent), organized labor (11 percent), Wall Street (11 percent) and major companies (14 percent).

As for respondents who noted they had "hardly any confidence at all" in certain institutions, the White House and the media tied with 41 percent of responses, followed by Congress (39 percent) and law firms (33 percent). The confidence in each of these institutions is at its lowest level in eight years.

This Harris Poll, which has been conducted for four decades, does not capture the specific reasons for the changes in confidence. However, the company believes that public perception of specific events (for example, the status of the War in Iraq) offers a partial explanation, as does the overall mood of the country.
"Public perceptions of different institutions and their leaders matter," the report notes. "They influence behavior."