Federal frustration, state satisfaction? Voters and decentralized governmental power

An analysis using the 1996 American National Elections Study and measures of state government responsiveness and performance finds that feelings about one's state government are largely ideological in orientation and have little 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-ideological factor that consistently related to feelings about the federal government and state governments. Feelings about the federal and state governments, and for the principle of big government in general, were powerfully linked to candidate vote choice in the 1996 presidential election, even after partisan and ideological factors were taken into account.