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(10/18/2005)

 

 

Americans Support Roberts for Supreme Court

Majority says Senate confirmation hearings will be a major fight

A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that nearly 6 in 10 Americans say they would like the Senate to confirm U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Americans are not convinced that the confirmation hearings will go smoothly. A slim majority expects a major fight between Republicans and Democrats. When it comes to the abortion issue, a majority of Americans say the Senate should insist that Roberts explain his views, but the public also feels that a nominee's position about whether to keep or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision should not be the lone factor that would disqualify the person from serving on the court.

Americans would like the Senate to confirm Roberts, according to the July 22-24 poll conducted just days after President George W. Bush nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. The poll finds that 59% of Americans say they would like to see the Senate vote in favor of Roberts serving on the Supreme Court, while 22% would not. Nearly one in five do not have an opinion. Free Cell Phone & Shipping

Perhaps not surprisingly, support for Roberts is related to party affiliation. More than 8 in 10 Republicans say the Senate should vote in favor of Roberts, while 5% do not support his confirmation and 13% have no opinion. Among Democrats, just 42% support Roberts' confirmation, while 35% do not and 23% have no opinion.

Also, the poll finds essentially no difference in support between Catholics and Protestants, even though Roberts is Catholic. More than 6 in 10 Protestants (65%) and Catholics (62%) say the Senate should confirm Roberts. Among those who are not Christian, only 28% support this. (Forty-four percent of non-Christians oppose his confirmation, and 28% have no opinion.)

Initial support for Roberts' confirmation is similar to what Gallup has found for two other Supreme Court nominees over the past 14 years. A few weeks after President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas in July 1991 but before the Anita Hill allegations came to light, a slight majority of Americans, 52% supported Thomas serving on the court. And, in mid-June 1993, days after her nomination, Gallup also found a slim majority of Americans, 53%, supporting confirmation for President Bill Clinton's nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

While Americans support Roberts serving on the court, they are more divided about how the Senate confirmation hearings will go. A slim majority of respondents, 51%, predict there will be a major fight between Republicans and Democrats that will drag on for a long time, while 42% say it will be a relatively easy process in which both parties come to an agreement.

Slightly less than half of Americans, 46%, say they have a favorable opinion of Roberts, while only 13% have an unfavorable opinion. A substantial number of Americans, 41%, do not know enough about the nominee at this point to rate him.

How important will Roberts' stance on abortion be in the confirmation process? That answer is unknown at this point, but the poll provides some clues.

Americans' positions on abortion seem to have relatively little influence on shaping support for Roberts. A majority of those who say they are pro-life (69%) as well as pro-choice (52%) on the abortion issue support Roberts' confirmation, although those who are pro-life are more likely to do so.

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,006 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted July 22-24, 2005. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

For results based on the 497 national adults in the Form A half-sample and 509 national adults in the Form B half-sample, the maximum margins of sampling error are ±5 percentage points.

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