Poll: Republicans Are Sick of Leftist Big Tech and Big Business

Over the past year, big tech and big business have tanked their image with Republicans, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

The percentage of Republicans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in big business declined by 12 points year-over-year to 20 percent. Confidence in big tech among Republicans took an even sharper dive, falling 18 points to 17 percent, according to the poll.

Fewer Republicans expressed “some” confidence in big business and large technology companies, with these ratings dropping by seven to eight points. The results also marked an increase in those expressing “very little” or no confidence, up 18 points for big business and 23 points for big tech.

Overall, Republicans’ net confidence in each — “the percentage expressing high confidence minus those expressing little or no confidence” — are notably negative for big business and big tech, even though both figures were positive just last year. For the long haul, Republicans’ net confidence in big business is at an all-time low, “representing one of only a handful of times it has sunk below zero on this measure.”

According to the report, Republicans could be sick of big business and big tech pushing the leftist agenda on Americans:

While the poll doesn’t answer why these changes have occurred, the trend spans a year when many corporations became more vocal about racial justice and took public stances in societal debates over voter laws and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Gallup further suggests rampant big tech censorship, especially related to the election and the pandemic, has put off many Republicans. Ire for the institution could be further enhanced by the “shuttering of former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, Democrats’ net confidence in big business, while still negative, has increased since last year, rising from -35 to -23. Democrats’ net confidence in big tech has decreased, but to a much lesser degree than Republicans’ — down 10 points to +10.

“Democrats’ current -23 net-confident score for big business is typical of that party’s orientation toward the institution since 2002. Their net-confident rating was less negative in most years before that, averaging -8 from 1973 to 2001,” the report states.

Gallup has been asking Americans to rate their confidence in different societal institutions since 1973, including big business, as “a great deal,” “quite a lot,” “some” or “only a little.” “Large technology companies” was added to the list in 2020.

“Today’s low-confidence percentage for big business ties the worst recorded for this institution in Gallup’s 48-year trend, with the previous lows recorded in 2007 and 2009, around the time of the Great Recession,” according to the report.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 1-July 5, 2021, with a random sample of 1,381 adults. The margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.