Fewer Americans named free speech as a First Amendment right in Annenberg's 2026 survey

The six-point move came on the open-ended recall question, the survey's hardest format. Annenberg asked respondents to name the rights the First Amendment guarantees without reading them a list ^[5]. Unprompted recall is a harder test than recognition, so 73% describes what people could produce on the spot over four days in August ^[1], not what they would affirm if the right were named for them.

A sample of 1,034 gives a 95% confidence half-width of about 3 points on a proportion near half ^[1]. For a difference between two independent samples that size at around 76%, the threshold is roughly 3.7 points, and the speech drop is 6 ^[2]. Run the same calculation near 68% and the threshold is about 4 points ^[3], below the 5-point distance between 70% in 2025 and 65% in 2026 that the center reports as not significant ^[2]. That simple binomial ignores survey weighting, and the release does not print item-level margins of error, so the gap between the two cannot be settled from the published summary.

The branches question has now produced 65% in 2024, 70% in 2025 and 65% in 2026 ^[2]. Over a third of adults, 35%, could not name all three this year ^[3]. "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." ^[9]

Wrong answers came in two kinds. Asked what the 10th Amendment says about the states and the federal government, 50% gave the correct reading, 13% reversed it and 37% said they were not sure ^[13]. The First Amendment item drew a confident error instead: 25% named the right to bear arms, which the Second Amendment protects ^[8], 13 points more than the 12% who named the right to petition the government ^[5]. Nine percent named all five protections and 24% named none, which leaves 67% somewhere in between ^[7][4].

The structural questions scored higher than the recall ones. Eighty-three percent knew a bill becomes law over a veto if two-thirds of each house votes to override ^[10]. Sixty percent knew the Supreme Court has the final responsibility when it and the president disagree, against 17% who assigned that to Congress and 19% who were not sure ^[12]. On birthright citizenship, 76% correctly said children born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens even when neither parent is ^[14]. A majority, 56%, called it inaccurate to say that people in the country illegally have no rights under the Constitution, while 44% called it accurate ^[15]. The Supreme Court has long held that the core protections are written in terms of "persons," not citizens, and apply regardless of immigration status ^[16].