Survey: 54% consider US govt. threat to individual liberty

More than half of Americans (54 percent) consider the federal government a threat to individual liberty rather than a protector, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found.

According to the survey, just 22 percent trust the government as a protector of individual rights, down from 30 percent last November. Around 24 percent of voters are undecided.

In December 2012, 45 percent of voters said the federal government was a protector of individual rights, while 46 percent described it as a threat to those rights.

The poll also found that 37 percent of Americans now fear the federal government, while 47 percent do not. About 17 percent are not sure.

According to the survey, men and those 40 and over are more likely to fear the federal government than women and younger voters.

Sixty-seven percent of American citizens think the federal government is a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests, but 17 percent disagree, and 15 percent are undecided, according to the survey.

The poll said only 19 percent trust the government, down from 24 percent in June of last year. Some 44 percent trust the government to do the right thing only some of the time and 36 percent believe it rarely or never does the right thing.

Rasmussen Reports conducted the survey of 1,000 Likely Voters on April 15-16, 2014.

The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC