The 2020 American National Election Survey asked, “Do you trust ordinary people or experts for public policy?’ Respondents could answer either or both. Overall, 42% chose both experts and ordinary people, 40% said experts, and 17% said ordinary people.

(By the way, I suppose I would answer “both,” although I have some concerns about trusting either experts or majority opinion.)

There was a partisan difference. A narrow majority (51%) of Democrats chose experts, and just 12% of Democrats said ordinary people. The largest group of Republicans (47%) said both, followed by ordinary people at 28%. Only 25% of Republicans chose experts.

When I controlled for education and age, partisanship was a significant predictor, meaning that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to trust experts, regardless of their own education and age. This is a meaningful difference between the parties.

The ANES also asked people to name their most important issue, using an open-ended question. The survey researchers assigned responses to many categories, most of which represented less than one percent of the sample. (For example, 0.2% of respondents named illegal drugs as their top issue.)

Among the more popular categories, there were some interesting differences in trust.

Seven percent of the sample chose the environment as their top issue, and of those people, 64% trusted experts while only 4% trusted ordinary people more. Apparently, environmentalists like expertise.

On the other hand, of the 1.8% who chose employment as their top issue, only 27% trusted experts more, and almost as many (23%) trusted ordinary people more. There are experts on employment (economists) but they do not seem to be trusted by the people who care most about this issue.

And for the 2% who chose the media as their top issue, experts came in last, behind ordinary people and “both.” This is a small group, but it seems that there are some critics of expertise who view the media as our main problem, perhaps because they distrust the experts whom they see in the news.