Federal frustration, state satisfaction? Voters and decentralized governmental power

An analysis using the 1996 American National Elections Study and measures o f state government responsiveness and performance finds that feelings about one's state government are largely ideological in orientation and have lit tle to do with any perceived failures on the part of the federal government or the actual performance or perceived responsiveness of the respondent's state government. National economic performance was the only non-ideologica l factor that consistently related to feelings about the federal government and state governments. Feelings about the federal and state governments, a nd for the principle of big government in general, were powerfully linked t o candidate vote choice in the 1996 presidential election, even after parti san and ideological factors were taken into account.