The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thrust the high court into the center of political discussion just over a month before Election Day.
President Trump wasted no time in nominating circuit court judge and conservative darling Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat. Senate Republicans plan to push to confirm Barrett before the election, with confirmation hearings set to begin Oct. 12 in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A new Cheddar/SurveyUSA poll of likely voters found that 44 percent disapprove or strongly disapprove of the Republicans’ decision to move forward on the nomination. Thirty-seven percent approve or strongly approve.
The move from the GOP, though, has not changed minds. Forty percent of voters say the Barrett confirmation push does not affect their vote, while 32 percent of Biden voters and 18 percent of Trump voters say it makes them more enthusiastic to vote for their candidate.
Notably, independent voters are closely divided on the handling of the Barrett nomination. Slightly more are OK with the process, with 42 percent approving or strongly approving compared to 39 percent disapproving or strongly disapproving.
One of the key reasons that led Trump to nominate Barrett is the belief among conservatives that she will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion.
According to the Cheddar poll, among people familiar with the case, most do not want to see the decision undone. Sixty-two percent want Roe v. Wade to remain the law of the land, 23 percent want to see it overturned, and 15 percent are unsure.
The poll also found differences between age groups in support for the decision, with younger voters expressing the most support. Voters aged 18-34 want to see Roe v. Wade stay intact by a margin of 72 percent to 17 percent. But even among the most skeptical voters, those 65 and older, far from a slim majority support the decision, with 59 percent saying they want to see it remain intact.
That is consistent with past findings on the abortion issue. The Pew Research Center found in 2019 that 61 percent of voters supported legal abortion in all or most cases, compared with 38 percent that say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
The Supreme Court is also set to hear a case, California v. Texas, that could undo the entire Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. The case, brought by several Republican states, argues that because the individual mandate to purchase health insurance was repealed in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the entire healthcare measure is unconstitutional.
The Trump administration filed a brief in support of this lawsuit, which reads in part, “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate…”
Barrett expressed skepticism in a 2017 article of the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision upholding the ACA. She wrote that the court’s majority opinion “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.” That writing has been widely cited by Democrats as indicating Barrett would vote to strike down the ACA.
If the Supreme Court were to undo the ACA, it would be acting against the preference of a majority of Americans. The Cheddar/SurveyUSA poll found that 56 percent of voters have a very favorable or favorable view of the law, and 54 percent believe that it should remain in place.
The poll of 1,114 likely voters was conducted online between October 1 and October 4 by SurveyUSA, exclusively for Cheddar. Read more results on the presidential race and top voter issues
