As in recent years, Americans view state and local governments much more favorably than the federal government in Washington. But favorability ratings at all three levels of government are lower than they were a few years ago.
Pew Research Center included these questions about federal, state, and local governments as part of a larger survey of how Americans view different levels of government. For this analysis, he surveyed 5,203 adults from November 27, 2023 to December 3, 2023.
All participants in this study are members of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP). The ATP is an online survey panel drawn from a nationwide random sample of residential addresses. In this way, nearly every American adult has the opportunity to choose. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, and other categories. Learn more about ATP's methodology here.
The questions and methodology used in the report are:
A December 2023 survey of 5,203 adults found:
- Only 22% of American adults have a favorable opinion of the federal government, down 10 points from 2022.
- Evaluations of state government are mixed, with 50% of adults having a favorable opinion and 49% having an unfavorable opinion. This reflects her 4-point drop in favorability since 2022 and her 9-point drop since 2019.
- 61% of adults rate their city positively. However, this is also down from 66% in 2022 and 69% in 2019.
federal opinion
About a third (32%) of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a favorable view of the federal government. This is down 17 points from May 2022, but is still higher than the 26% who had a positive opinion in August 2019 during the Trump administration.
Democrats are about three times as likely as Republicans to rate the federal government positively. About 1 in 10 (11%) Republicans and Republican voters view the federal government favorably. This is essentially unchanged from 2022, but is significantly lower than in 2019, when 41% had a favorable view.
State government opinion
Americans' views of state governments vary greatly depending on whether their political party is in power or not.
Democrats and Republicans alike hold far more favorable views of state government when their party controls both the Legislature and the governorship.
For example, 70% of Republicans living in states with Republican leadership have a positive view of state government. By contrast, only 43% of Republicans living in divided-and-rule states and 22% of Republicans living in states with Democratic leadership have a positive view.
There is a similar pattern among Democrats.
Local government opinion
Americans show little difference in their opinions of local government by political party, with similar proportions of Republicans (63%) and Democrats (64%) having a favorable opinion.
Note: Here are the questions used in the report and its methodology.
