New Poll Finds Support for Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation Keeps Rising
A new poll released Wednesday shows that support for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation continues to rise steadily.
The Oct. 9-11 Morning Consult/Politico poll found that 48 percent of registered voters said the Senate should vote to confirm Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, up two percentage points from a poll a week ago.
The percentage of registered voters who said the Senate should vote to deny Barrett’s nomination remained unchanged at 31 percent.
Support for Barrett’s nomination has increased by 11 percentage points since President Donald Trump announced her nomination on Sept. 26 and compares favorably with public sentiment toward Justice Brett Kavanaugh prior to his confirmation hearings, the Morning Consult reported.
At the time, 37 percent of voters said Kavanaugh should be confirmed while 29 percent said the Senate should vote to deny his confirmation.
When split into Republicans and Democrats, 77 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats said Barrett should be confirmed — a larger share of support than was shown for Kavanaugh in 2018.
Although Democrats have been pushing to hold off the vote on Barrett’s nomination until after the election, the results of the recent poll show they have not yet swayed public opinion.
Forty-four percent of voters want the Senate to confirm Barrett quickly, while 36 percent want to wait to see if Trump wins the election before confirming his nominee.
From our latest poll with @politico: By an 8-point margin, voters say that the Senate should vote on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court as soon as possible, rather than wait to see the winner of the 2020 election. https://t.co/wbDcpw0GVF pic.twitter.com/nWNvVE9k64
— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) October 14, 2020
When split into political parties, 73 percent of Republicans and 23 percent of Democrats want the Senate to vote to confirm Barrett as soon as possible.
Fifty-nine percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans want the Senate to wait until after Nov. 3.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina addressed that issue during Barrett’s hearing on Monday, arguing Justice Ginsburg said several years ago that “a president serves for four years, not three,” so there is nothing unconstitutional about starting the confirmation process.
“This is a vacancy that has occurred through a tragic loss of a great woman, and we’re going to fill that vacancy with another great woman,” Graham said.
Judge Barrett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has been facing the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions this week in regard to her nomination.
When asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein how she would rule on various hypothetical scenarios like if the president has the authority to delay a general election, Barrett told the California Democrat that she would rule on cases, not on speculation.
“If that question ever came before me, I would need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process,” she said.
The Morning Consult/Politico poll was conducted online from Oct. 9-11 with a sample of 1,986 registered voters and a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.
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