Two lines, one story. The navy line is the ANES item this chapter quotes — “public officials don’t care much what people like me think” — showing the share who disagree, among respondents who took a side either way. The lighter line is ANES’s own external efficacy index (VCF0648), which averages that item with a second one and scores “neither” at the midpoint. Two different constructions, built by different hands, tracking each other for seventy years. The index runs a little higher after 1988 because that midpoint scoring pulls it toward the center; it ends at 2020 because ANES has not yet scored it for 2024.