After a week of confirmation hearings where the Democrats proved that they had no dirt or legitimate objections to the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett whatsoever, the majority of Americans now support her confirmation.
Immediately after her nomination the polling showed a plurality but not a majority supporting her, but that has since changed since the public got to hear her speak in her own words, as opposed to the media’s caricatures of her.
According to Gallup:
A slim 51% majority of Americans support federal judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last month. At the same time, 46% of U.S. adults do not want Barrett to be seated, and 3% do not yet have an opinion of her nomination.
Barrett is the twelfth Supreme Court nominee for whom Gallup has measured public support since 1987. The public’s initial support for Barrett’s confirmation is higher than either of President Donald Trump’s two previous nominees — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — had at any point prior to their confirmations. But opposition is also higher than any other nominee’s initial reading. This is owed to the fact that the percentage of Americans with no opinion on the Barrett vote is strikingly lower than it has been for any other nominee in Gallup’s history.
Among Gallup’s other findings were that opinion on ACB’s confirmation is more strongly split among party lines than pass nominees. 84% of Democrats oppose her nomination, while “only” 78% opposed Kavanaugh. You’d think opposition to Kavanaugh would’ve been 100% had Democrats actually believed their smears against him.
Meanwhile, Republican’s support for Barrett’s confirmation is higher than for any nominee dating back to 1987. 89% of Republicans support her, while 76% favored Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.
ACB’s confirmation vote date is set for October 22nd at 1PM.
That this confirmation process is happening to close to an election is unquestionably the main factor for why so many Americans have an opinion on the matter compared to past nominees, and why opinion is split so strongly across party lines. Democrats have pointed to Republicans refusal to advance the nomination of Merrick Garland during an election year to argue that Republicans are being hypocrites for moving through the confirmation process with a nominee of their own. The obvious difference here is that Republicans controlled the Senate when Garland was nominated, and he likely wouldn’t have been confirmed even if hearings were held. Since the 1880s there hasn’t been a single case of the Senate confirming an opposing-party president’s SCOTUS nomination in an election year.
Others have also claimed that nominating someone now would violate Ruth Bader Ginsburgās dying wish to have someone other than Trump nominate her replacement. However, we can never be fully sure that Antonin Scalia’s dying wish wasn’t that nobody would listen to Ginsburg’s dying wish.
