[ad_1]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Most Americans, including many Republicans, want the winner of the November presidential election to name a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the US Supreme Court, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released on Sunday.
The national opinion poll, conducted Sept. 19-20 after Ginsburg’s death was announced, suggests that many Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s plan, backed by many Senate Republicans, to push for another lifetime appointment and cement a conservative majority of 6-3 Court.
The poll found that 62% of American adults agreed that the vacancy should be filled by the winner of the Nov. 3 showdown between Trump and former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, while 23% disagreed and the rest said they were not sure.
Eight out of 10 Democrats, and five out of 10 Republicans, agreed that the appointment should wait until after the election.
Trump needs the support of the Senate, which currently has a 53-47 Republican majority to confirm a nominee. So far, two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said publicly since Ginsburg’s death on Friday that they believe the winner of the election should be nominated.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a weeks-long vote for Trump’s term.
Democrats are still furious over their refusal to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 after Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died 10 months before those elections. McConnell said then that the Senate should not act on a candidate for court during an election year, a position that has since changed.
The looming fight for the Supreme Court vacancy so far does not appear to have given either of the two major political parties much of an advantage in a season of incendiary campaign that was already expected to break turnout records.
The poll found that 30% of American adults said Ginsburg’s death will make them more likely to vote for Biden, while 25% said they are now more likely to support Trump. Another 38% said it had no impact on their interest in voting, and the rest said they were not sure.
The Reuters / Ipsos survey was conducted online, in English, across the United States. It collected responses from 1,006 American adults, including 463 Democrats and 374 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)
[ad_2]
