Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, agree with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal throughout the United States, according to a new poll.
The poll released Monday from Quinnipiac University comes as President Trump is mulling a nominee to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had been a fifth vote to uphold the decision.
Quinnipiac found that American voters agree 63 to 31 percent with the Roe v. Wade decision.
Men agree with the decision by a 61 to 32 percent margin, and women agree 65 to 30 percent, the poll found.
The stance of any potential nominee on Roe v. Wade is going to be a hot-button issue in their confirmation process, though, in recent decades, nominees have declined to comment on cases that could theoretically come before the court. Trump has said he will announce a pick by July 9.
Centrist GOP Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said that she would not support a candidate that has demonstrated opposition to Roe.
Other findings from the poll show a majority of Americans — 50 percent to 42 percent — believe that politics rather than the law motivates the Supreme Court’s rulings.
Voters are also divided on whether the Senate should consider Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before or after the midterm elections.
The poll found that 46 percent believe that the Senate should vote on the nominee before November’s midterm elections and 48 percent said a confirmation vote should wait until after.
Democrats have said that Republicans should wait until after the midterm elections this fall to consider a nominee. They cite the decision of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to not consider former President Barack Obama’s pick Merrick Garland in 2016 after the death of Antonin Scalia because it was in a presidential election year.
Republicans counter that this is a midterm year, not a presidential election year. They also point to the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee who was confirmed in August of a midterm election year.
Quinnipiac’s poll was based on a survey of 1,020 voters nationwide and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
