Just 9% of U.S. adults can name all five rights protected by the First Amendment, and roughly a third cannot identify the three branches of government, according to the annual Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey β results that land less than seven weeks before the midterm elections.
The University of Pennsylvania survey, conducted August 6-9 among a national sample of 1,034 adults, found that 65% of respondents could correctly name the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. That figure is statistically unchanged from 70% in 2025 and 65% in 2024, suggesting a stubborn plateau rather than a slide, according to the Daily Wire’s coverage of the findings.
First Amendment Stumbles
The deeper trouble shows up when Americans are asked what the First Amendment actually protects. Freedom of speech was the most commonly recognized right, named by 73% of respondents β but that is down six points from 79% a year earlier. Freedom of religion drew 43%, freedom of assembly 31%, freedom of the press 29%, and the right to petition the government just 12%.
Only 9% could list all five. Nearly a quarter β 24% β could not name a single one.
A quarter of those surveyed, 25%, mistakenly listed the right to bear arms as a First Amendment protection. That right is enshrined in the Second Amendment, a distinction that appears to be blurring for a significant slice of the public.
“Ignorance is costly,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said in response to the results. “You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have.”
Where the Public Does Better
The picture is not uniformly bleak. Most Americans understand the mechanics of how the other branches check one another. Eighty-three percent know that Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers. And 69% correctly understand that a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling carries the force of law and must be followed.
Those numbers suggest the gap is less about the architecture of government as a whole and more about the specific contents of the Bill of Rights β the text that citizens are most often invoked as needing to defend.
Schools Under Scrutiny
The survey arrives amid a broader debate over how β and how well β American schools teach civics.
In a July commentary for The Daily Wire, Manhattan Institute fellow Jennifer Weber called for a civic education revival tied to the nation’s 250th anniversary, arguing that schools have failed to prepare the next generation to understand the Founding.
Federal testing data points in the same direction. On the most recent released National Assessment of Educational Progress U.S. history results, drawn from the 2022 exam, only 13% of eighth graders scored at or above proficient β the lowest rate of any subject tested β while 40% fell below the basic level. Average history scores have declined in each round of testing since 2014.
On the 2022 NAEP civics exam, 22% of eighth graders reached proficient and 31% scored below basic. The next round of NAEP results, which will cover 2026, is expected to offer a fresh look at whether those trends have shifted.
Why It Matters Before November
The timing of the Annenberg release is hard to ignore. Midterm elections typically hinge on turnout, ballot literacy, and voters’ grasp of what the offices on their ballots actually do. A public that struggles to name the rights in the First Amendment β or that confuses them with the Second β is a public that may be harder to mobilize around the constitutional arguments that dominate so much of the current political debate.
Jamieson’s warning cuts at that: rights that citizens cannot name are rights they are less equipped to exercise or defend. The survey does not attempt to draw a straight line from civic ignorance to any particular election outcome. But it does establish that the baseline is low, and that it has been low for several years running.
The Annenberg survey has been conducted annually around Constitution Day, September 17, for years. Its stability across the past three cycles β 65%, 70%, 65% on the branches question β suggests the problem is not a sudden rupture but a persistent condition.
For now, the clearest takeaway is narrow and measurable: a wide majority of Americans can tell you how a veto works, but a vanishingly small share can recite the five freedoms the First Amendment was written to protect.
Source: www.dailywire.com β https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-survey-exposes-glaring-gaps-in-americans-civics-knowledge