UMBC poll finds Baltimore residents optimistic, but skeptical of city government

Baltimore’s biggest warning sign in a new UMBC poll is not despair but distrust: nearly 62% of city residents said they never or only sometimes trust local government, even though 61% said they are optimistic about Baltimore’s future.

That split helps explain why 45% of Baltimore City respondents said the city is on the wrong track, compared with 41% who said it is headed in the right direction. The poll surveyed 666 city residents and 602 Baltimore County residents, and it points to a public mood shaped less by ideology than by whether everyday life feels manageable, especially as affordability and energy costs rose to the top of residents’ concerns.

For Mayor Brandon M. Scott, the numbers land just after he used his sixth annual State of the City address at Baltimore Center Stage to highlight progress on public safety and neighborhood change. On April 1, Scott said Baltimore had 28 homicides and 61 non-fatal shootings so far in 2026, down from 32 homicides and 66 non-fatal shootings at the same point in 2025. City Hall has also been promoting the Community Action Lab and pointing to a drop in vacant homes from about 16,000 to under 12,000. The poll suggests those gains have not yet translated into broad confidence that city government is working in residents’ favor.

The gap between hope and trust is especially important in Baltimore because the city’s biggest pressure points are so visible. A resident can see construction, new housing and public-safety milestones, yet still feel squeezed by utility bills, housing costs and uneven city services. That is the backdrop for a poll that measures not just political sentiment, but whether Baltimore feels stable enough for the people living in it now.

The survey also shows that Baltimoreans are not all planning an exit. In the city, 38% said they expect to stay for 20 years or the rest of their lives, while 19% said they plan to stay three years or less. In Baltimore County, 35% said they expect to stay that long, while 14% said three years or less. Those figures suggest that even skeptical residents are still imagining a long future here.

The new results are broadly consistent with UMBC’s April 2025 Baltimore poll, which found 41% of city residents saying Baltimore was on the right track and 47% saying it was going in the wrong direction. In Baltimore County, 31% now say the county is headed in the right direction and 50% say it is going in the wrong direction, a slight shift from 2025, when 34% said right direction and 51% said wrong direction. The message for City Hall is plain: optimism is still there, but legitimacy will depend on whether residents feel relief in the bills they pay and the services they use every day.