Voter support for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh remained steady right before his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, according to multiple polls released Tuesday, defying how nominees typically losing public support in the time between a nomination and hearing.
In a Gallup poll taken Aug. 20-26, 40 percent of adults were in favor of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirming Kavanaugh while 36 percent were not. Each of those numbers dropped 1 percentage point since mid-July. About a quarter of respondents had no opinion, up 2 percentage point since mid-July.
Gallup said that in its more than three decades of tracking approval of Supreme Court nominees, the average person saw a six-point increase in his or her unfavorable ratings.
“Since 1987, Gallup has obtained multiple measures on seven Supreme Court nominees before Kavanaugh. On average, there has been a six-point increase in the percentage wanting the Senate to vote against confirmation and a concomitant six-point drop in the percentage without an opinion, with no increase in support, between the first and second measurements for these nominees,” Gallup stated in its analysis.
A Morning Consult/Politico survey taken Aug. 28-31 found 37 percent of voters want Kavanaugh to take the place of recently retired Justice Anthony Kennedy compared to 29 percent who oppose it. One-third of people don’t have an opinion.
At the time of Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh in July, the same survey found 40 percent approved and 28 percent disapproved.
Americans opinions of Kavanaugh are highly polarized. The majority of Republicans support the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judge while a large portion of Democrats have oppose Kavanaugh.
Approximately three-in-four respondents say their senators’ votes on Kavanaugh will affect how they vote in the midterm elections, if their senators are up for re-election.
The Morning Consult poll was taken online among 1,964 voters nationwide and had a 2 percentage point margin of error.
The Gallup poll was taken by telephone with 1,509 adults nationwide and had a 3 percentage point margin of error.
[Also read: Start of Kavanaugh hearing consumed by document fight]
