As Obama’s Time in Office Lengthens, Number of Democrats Who Think Government Has Too Much Power Has Grown

A Gallup poll released Friday shows that 60 percent of Americans believe that the federal government has too much power.

Where once distrust of government power was a distinctly conservative trait during President Barack Obama’s presidency, now the concern about increasing federal power has crept across party lines and brought the level of distrust for the government to an all-time high across the board.

There has been a 13-point increase between Obama’s first and second terms of Democrats who believe that the government is too powerful.

2013 is the only other time Gallup reported such a level of distrust since the start of polling on the subject annually in 2002. The high level of distrust has remained relatively steady since 2013, but those figures differ significantly in the 2012 report, which showed that 51 percent of Americans were concerned about the level of power the government had.

The consistently high concern over the level of government power correlates with Obama’s second term in office, which shows that Republican concern over government power is not solely responsible for the current percentage of distrust.  

Fifty-seven percent of moderates and 64 percent of independents also now share the once largely Republican belief that the federal government has seized and wields too much power under Obama.