I guess it's never that surprising. 30 years of politicians thumping the anti-government line was bound to have psychologically conditioned a pretty large number of people into being afraid of the government. The only way that's getting overturned is if an equally ubiquitous message that points the blame at corporations that would rather offshore your job than pay people a wage with cost of living increases. But the government kinda screwed themselves that way by passing free trade agreements and appearing to be in cohorts with the worst corporations...so I guess if you really want those poll numbers to improve, you'd have to start with fixing that problem (the corrupt trade agreements, of course...and after that, figuring out how to nullify the Citizen's United decision and prevent politicians from soaking up big donations...that seems more than a little untrustworthy to most folks, too).

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I think Steve Benen at Washington Monthly Blog said it best:

“If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you’d only see one circle.”

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I think there is an increasing knowledge regarding the principles of what is good government. People are starting to figure out if you use government to implement your own social agenda it will backfire on you someday. If government were limited to what it's true function is of protecting life liberty and property and not taking a pro active role in every issue, there would be less toes stepped on and less anger. People who have something taken away (ei money or social freedom) are always more angry than those who do not get benefits they did not already have.

First, where is the methodology broken down?

I see that Pew did state in the bottom of the article that it was done across the US with both land line and cell phone.

If you poll mainly land line, then your sample tends to be older (age 60+) and female. In contrast, if you poll cell phone users, your sample tends to be working age and not as likely to vote.

See: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/use-of-likely-voter-model-does-not.html

Second, in the methodology, why did they not list whether they got a 50/50 break in their results of land line and cell phone users? I am fairly certain those of us who are cell phone users only tend to be working, don't have time to answer their stupid questions, and tend to hang up when we hear the "Hello this is an automated poll from the Pew Research...."

Working people have sh*t to do and spending 15 to 30 minutes after work answering an automated poll is not one of them. Henceforth, those who are older, spend a considerable amount of time watching their Fox News or MSNBC, and call up their old war friend "Vince" are overwhelmingly disproportionately represented in automated telephone polls.

Yes, older people tend to vote more. However, is it their opinion we want because we can get a higher feedback rate from them or do we want the opinion of those who are working in the world they created long after they are dead in 20 to 30 years?

Ryan, Pew has done extensive work on looking at the effect of cell phones. Have a look here:

http://people-press.org/methodology/sampling/

No polling firm does a more careful job trying to match their polls with the population (be it the general population or likely voters). In this case, the sample was not of voters, but citizens.

Without questioning the validity of any of what has been said, how about considering the leftist version of the same thing?

Nixon was a crook. We rose up and elected a "good man", in Jimmy Carter. The Church Commission, coupled with Watergate proved that gov was bad.

Americans shrank away in horror from Carter's vision, and opted for "Morning In America" with Reagan. Since then, we've seen a slow return to the criminal Nixon days. That is why the left distrusts gov.

QED?, that distrust in gov does not equal irrational fanaticism.