Partisanship and Perceptions of Corruption in Illinois

Brian J. Gaines and James H. Kuklinski

In the autumn 2006 Illinois Opinion Monitor, we asked our general-population sample a series of question about their trust in government and their assessments of whether various individuals and institutions are corrupt. What stood out most about the responses is that, on both fronts, many people appear to view the world through partisan lenses. The stronger their partisan attachments, the more Democrats and Republicans differ in their assessments.

Consider the questions about trust. We asked

How much of the time do you think you can trust the federal government in Washington to do what is right?

and

How much of the time do you think you can trust the Illinois state government in Springfield to do what is right?

In both cases, the possible responses were:

Just about always
Most of the time
Only some of the time
Never

Figure 1 indicates how the responses broke down according to the respondents’ self-identified party identification. The seven categories we use throughout this report are: SD=strong Democrat; D=Democrat; ID=independent Democrat; Ind= (pure) independent; IR=independent Republican; R=Republican; and, SR=strong Republican. The “independent” partisans are those who initially declined to report any preference between parties, but then admitted to “leaning” toward one party over the other when pressed. The “pure” independents, in contrast, said twice that they favor neither party. The partisans, meanwhile, are divided into those who declared themselves strongly partisan and those who said that, while they think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, they are not strongly attached to that party.

Figure 1. Trust in Federal and State Government by Party ID

It probably comes as no surprise that almost no one chose “always,” while about 15 percent of the sample chose “never.” More interesting is the pattern by partisanship. At the time, Illinois had a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly; the U.S., by contrast, was being governed by a Republican president and a Congress in which both chambers had Republican majorities. Our Republicans respondents, accordingly, placed much higher trust in the federal government than the state government. The converse was true for the Democrats. A comparison of self-described strong Republicans and strong Democrats reveals a near mirror image: about 40 percent saying they “mostly” trust the level of government where their preferred party is in power, and only about 10 percent saying the same about the level of government controlled by the other party. Likewise, more than 20 percent of each group said they “never” trust the government not in their own party’s hands to do what is right. It is hard to believe that these differences originate in strong beliefs about the relevant institutions in DC and Springfield. Instead, party attachments and mutual suspicions seem to be the driving force behind these attitudes.

We also asked:

When you think about corruption in government, do you think that Democrats and Republicans differ?

Figure 2 shows the responses, again broken down by the respondents’ partisanship. The pure independents—those respondents who claim to have no leanings at all toward either major party—are a bit more likely to say the GOP is worse than the Democrats on corruption. For Democrats and Republicans, the key issue is what proportion resisted the temptation to vilify the other party with respect to corruption. Between 57 percent and 80 percent of all Republicans eschewed the partisan stance, instead saying the parties were identical. Only 40-60 percent of Democrats returned the favor. We make no assumption about whether the parties are objectively different, but we note that the GOP came out looking worse on corruption here mostly because of this asymmetry.

Figure 2. Do the Major Parties Differ in Their Level of Corruption?

Finally, we also asked:

How serious a problem would you say that corruption is in government? Please rate each of the following individuals or institutions on the corruption scale, running from 1=very corrupt to 10=not at all corrupt.

The respondents rated all of the following, and the order in which these options were presented was randomized.

President George Bush
The US Congress
Governor Rod Blagojevich
The Illinois General Assembly
Mayor Richard Daley
The Chicago City Council

Figure 3 shows, in three panels, how the president, governor, and mayor, and their respective legislative peers, were rated. Each figure shows the mean score for the given partisan group, with error bars showing the margin of error for 95 percent confidence. The partisan differences are a little less pronounced here than on the prior questions, except with respect to President Bush. Bush is rated much more highly than Governor Blagojevich or Mayor Daley, because of very high loyalty (i.e. low corruption ratings) from the Republican respondents. In fact, apart from the three varieties of Republican all giving Bush high marks, the picture that emerges here is one of most respondents taking a rather dim view of all the politicos. President Bush and the Illinois General Assembly are just barely on the positive side of the corruption scale—the US Congress, Governor Blagojevich, Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council were all rated closer to “very corrupt” than “not at all corrupt.”

Figure 3. Perceived Corruption of Federal, State, and Chicago Politicians