A Third Of Americans Still Can’t Name The 3 Branches Of Government

Annual Survey Shows Persistent Gap In Basic Civics Knowledge

Ask a random adult to name the three branches of government, and there’s a real chance they’ll draw a blank. A new nationwide survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania finds that 35 percent of U.S. adults can’t name all three, a gap that has barely budged in three years of asking.

Released ahead of Constitution Day, the 2026 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey polled 1,034 adults nationwide between August 6 and 9. It’s the kind of pop quiz that sounds easy on paper: executive, legislative, judicial. Yet only 65 percent of respondents could rattle off all three, statistically unchanged from 65 percent in 2024 and 70 percent in 2025.

Civics knowledge doesn’t stop at the branches. When researchers asked what rights the First Amendment protects, freedom of speech was the only one a majority could name, and even that number slipped. A quarter of respondents mixed up their amendments entirely, naming the right to bear arms, which actually falls under the Second.

Naming the Three Branches of Government Hasn’t Gotten Easier

Constitution Day marks the anniversary of the document’s signing on September 17, 1787, and APPC has used the occasion for years to check the public’s grip on basic civics. This year’s branch-of-government result puts more than a third of adults, roughly 1 in 3, unable to complete a task most middle schoolers learn in social studies class.

That stagnation is the real story here. Three years hovering in the same range, 65 percent, 70 percent, 65 percent, suggest that the gap hasn’t meaningfully changed in recent surveys.

Freedom of Speech Is the Only Right Most People Can Name

Knowledge of the First Amendment fared worse than knowledge of the branches. Fewer than half, 43 percent, could name freedom of religion. Freedom of assembly and freedom of the press trailed further behind at 31 percent and 29 percent. Only 12 percent, roughly 1 in 10, named the right to petition the government.

Nine percent of respondents named all five protections. Nearly a quarter, 24 percent, couldn’t name a single one. And freedom of speech recognition itself dropped six points, from 79 percent last year to 73 percent this year, a decline wide enough that APPC’s researchers flagged it as a real shift rather than survey noise.

“Ignorance is costly,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have.”

Three Branches of Government Knowledge Sits Alongside Other Gaps

Other findings from the survey point to a mixed civics picture. Most adults, 83 percent, correctly understand that a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress can override a presidential veto. But confusion crept in around the courts: nearly a fifth of respondents, 18 percent, mistakenly believe a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling gets kicked back to Congress rather than standing as the law.

States’ rights fared no better. Asked what the 10th Amendment says about power-sharing between states and the federal government, only half of adults, 50 percent, gave the correct answer, while 37 percent said they weren’t sure.

Not every result was grim. Three-quarters of respondents, 76 percent, correctly answered the survey’s birthright-citizenship question, that children born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens even if neither parent is a citizen, an issue now before the courts. Another 56 percent knew that constitutional protections extend to immigrants without legal status.

Civics scores like these tend to draw a shrug rather than alarm, in part because the branches of government feel like trivia rather than something with daily stakes. But Jamieson’s framing cuts the other way: a right is hard to protect when someone doesn’t know they have it. Constitution Day exists to close exactly that kind of gap, and this year’s numbers suggest it still has plenty of work ahead of it.

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