Introduction What causes political trust? Since at least the 1970s, understanding the causes and correlates of political trust has been a core endeavour of political science (for reviews, see Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Carstens, 2023; Dalton, 2004; Zmerli & Hooghe, 2011; Zmerli & van der Meer, 2017). Despite this substantial scholarly endeavour, there is still little consensus on which factors have the largest, if any, causal effect.