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Whether the federal government has too much power; ANES asks only people with an opinion to choose 'too powerful' or 'not getting too strong,' while the GSS uses a five-point too much/too little scale with an 'about right' middle.
AI-matched An AI model grouped these questions and mapped their answers onto shared categories, and a second AI review checked and corrected the grouping and mapping. No person has checked it: compare the question wordings and the answer mapping below before reading the lines against each other.
Latest: 69% answered “Too powerful” in ANES, 2000.
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each column is one survey wave, evenly spaced rather than to scale in time; hover for exact shares.
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.
Groups differ from everyone by 8 points on average across all answers, in ANES.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANES | Federal government too powerful Some people are afraid the government in Washington is getting too powerful for the good of the country and the individual person. Others feel that the government in Washington is not getting too strong (1964,1966,1970: has not gotten too strong for the good of the country).
1964-1972:
Have you been interested enough in this to favor one side over the other?
1976-1992:
Do you have an opinion on this or not?
ALL YEARS:
(IF YES:) What is your feeling? Do you think the government is too powerful or do you think the government is not getting too strong? Caveat: Two-option forced choice; 'not too strong' mixes 'about right' and 'too little'; no-opinion screened out | identical | Opinion: the government has not gotten too strong → About right / not too strong; Opinion: the government is getting too powerful → Too powerful |
| GSS | Power of the federal government And what about the federal government, does it have too much power or too little power? Caveat: Five-point too much/too little scale collapsed; explicit middle option, unlike ANES | similar | Far too much power → Too powerful; Too much power → Too powerful; About the right amount of power → About right / not too strong; Too little power → Too little power; Far too little power → Too little power |
Groups differ from everyone by 4 points on average across all answers, in ANES.
Subgroup charts are picked automatically. Of every breakdown in the data (party, ideology, age, sex, race, education, income, region, religion, and community type), these two put their groups furthest from everyone’s answers: the gap is averaged across all answer categories and waves, with each group weighted by its share of respondents. Party and ideology count as one choice, so the second chart shows a different kind of split. Groups with an effective sample under 50 in a wave are left out of that wave.