Low levels of trust towards banks and politics
In a recent poll, conducted by Market and Media Research (MMR), measuring public trust towards key institutions, most people were found to trust the Police, whereas most people distrusted the bank system.
81.3 percent said they trusted they trusted the Police “a lot” or “somewhat”. Second in line was the University of Iceland, trusted by 68.6% of the poll’s respondents. The State-owned broadcast services RÚV came in third, at 59.7%.
According to RÚV, the poll was conducted before the publication of a Police report, which inadvertently disclosed the identities of various individuals supposed to remain confidential. Most of it was also conducted before news broke out about Police acquiring at least 150 machine guns from Norway.
Workers’ unions in general, the EU, the Central Bank, the media, retirement funds, the current government, the opposition, the IMF, Alþingi, and financial institutions all face higher levels of distrust than trust. Least of all, people trust the banks, where only 5.9% declared any trust at all, whereas 75.1% said they had little or no faith in them. According to MMR, these are still higher levels of trust than measured in previous polls. Alþingi only measured slightly better at 10.6% finding it somewhat or very trustworthy, and 62.8% somewhat or very untrustworthy.
41.6% of correspondents trust the media little or hardly at all, while 15.3% trust them somewhat or a lot. In contrast to these general attitudes to the media, as mentioned above, RÚV is reported to be trusted by many.
All in all, according to MMR, the poll results show growing levels of trust, compared with previous polls, in all instances except towards the government opposition.
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