How Much Legitimacy Does the Illinois Judicial System Have?

The Glengariff Group recently released it's latest statewide survey. One of the questions we asked Illinois voters was:


"Generally speaking how would you describe your level of faith in the justice system of Illinois. Would you say the justice system always gets it right, usually gets it right, usually gets it wrong, or always gets it wrong?"

3.0% said it always gets it right
64.8% said it usually gets it right
24.0% said it usually gets it wrong
3.3% said they always get it wrong
4.8% just didn't know

So more than one in four Illinois voters does not have faith that the judicial system of their state will get the answer right.


More staggering is that while 72.2% of white voters say the judicial system will get it right, only 47.6% of our state's African American voters say the system always or usually gets it right. That's right. As many African American voters say our state's judicial system gets it wrong as those that say the judicial system gets it right.

Read the cross-tabs here.

Some say our judicial system is in trouble. That's hard to dispute when one in four of our voters have no faith in the answer they will get. But for African American voters, the legitimacy of the Illinois judicial system is an all-out crisis.


(The survey was a 600 sample live operator telephone survey stratified by region, gender, ethnicity, and age. The survey has a margin of error of +/-4%.)