(CNN) Americans have lacked trust in the federal government since the 1970s. From the late 1950s until the Watergate scandal, a majority of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. But since then, it's been a minority (with the exception of the period after the 9/11 attacks).
This lack of general trust is now hurting our Covid-19 vaccination effort. Trust in the government to give accurate information about the coronavirus is one of the most predictive variables over whether a person is vaccinated.
We can see how much trust matters in Axios/Ipsos polling. Their most recent poll shows that 17% of Americans have a great deal of trust in the federal government information to give accurate information about the virus. An additional 38% have a fair amount of trust.
This combined 56% (rounded) is close to the 59% of adults who are currently fully vaccinated against the virus.
Breaking it down further, we see that 91% of adults fully vaccinated have a great deal of trust in the federal government to give accurate information about the coronavirus. The percentage fully vaccinated drops to 78% among those who have a fair amount of trust, 57% among those who have not very much trust and 35% who have no trust at all.
It might be tempting to think that this trust factor is merely due to partisanship -- one might think that because the federal government is run by Democrats currently, naturally Republicans might be mistrusting.
But when you drill down to trust in state governments (many of which are run by Republicans) to provide accurate coronavirus information, trust remains paramount.
A very high 86% of adults with a great deal of trust in state governments to give accurate information on the coronavirus have been vaccinated. Only 41% who have no trust at all in state governments have been vaccinated.
These gaps in vaccination rates among those who have a great deal of trust and none at all is larger than the partisan gap in this poll of 27 points between the percentage of Democrats and Republicans fully vaccinated.
You can see that within partisan groups how important trust in the information the federal government is giving is to vaccination rates.
Among Democrats, about 90% who have a great or fair amount of trust in the information the federal government is giving about the coronavirus are vaccinated. That drops to about 40% among those who have not very much or no trust at all.
Among Republicans, 70% who have a great or fair amount of trust in the federal government's information on the coronavirus have been fully vaccinated. That drops to about 45% among Republicans who have not very much or not trust at all.
The lack of trust in the federal government makes President Joe Biden's administration's efforts to convince unvaccinated people to get the vaccine difficult. This is especially the case among unvaccinated Republicans.
Just 4% of non-fully vaccinated Republicans have a great deal of trust in the federal government to give accurate coronavirus information. An additional 16% have a fair amount. The vast majority (80%) have little to none at all.
It's not just Ipsos' polling that indicates lack of trust in the federal government hurts the vaccine effort.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed that 32% of unvaccinated adults said they didn't trust Biden to provide reliable information about the Covid-19 vaccines. This drops to 15% among those who say they will definitely not be vaccinated. For Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a mere 27% of the unvaccinated trust him. Among those who definitely won't get vaccinated, just 8% do.
A better bet than relying on the federal government to be communicators on the vaccine is local doctors. A majority of all unvaccinated adults, 69%, and those who claim they definitely will not get the vaccine, 60%, say they trust their own doctor for information on the vaccines.
These numbers make it clear that the Biden administration's effort to put the vaccines into local doctor's offices is a smart move.