FSince the Supreme Court’s decision, favorable views have declined Roe V. WadeA new Pew Research Center survey has found that a sharp drop in Democratic approval is the main reason for this decline.
Pew never found a greater partisan divide in its survey of 35 years on the court. Only 28% of Democrats, and Democratic-leaning Independents, rated the Supreme Court favorable in August. That’s the lowest rating Democrats have ever given the court in the poll’s history—18 percentage points lower than in January before the court gutted abortion rights, and almost 40 points lower than in 2020.
The number of Republicans favoring the court’s rulings has increased moderately. In January, 65% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents considered the court favorable, while only 73% said so in August.
Pew Research Center found that 48% of Americans view the Supreme Court favorably and 49% disagree. Jocelyn Kiley (associate director of research, Pew Research Center) says this represents the highest proportion of Americans with unfavorable views regarding the Supreme Court, which Pew has recorded in three decades. Pew discovered that 70% of Americans had positive views of the supreme court in August 2020.
Survey results were released on Thursday. The poll was taken among 7 647 adults in the United States, which included 5,681 voters registered between August 1st and 14. The survey, which was nonpartisan and conducted by Pew Research Center, sought to assess the perceptions of Americans about the court’s term. It included several highly publicized rulings that were largely ideological in nature. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The proportion of Democrats who think the U.S. Supreme Court holds too many power rights has more than tripled from 2020 to this point, increasing by over 20 points in 2019. 64% of Democrats believe that the court is too power-hungry, up from 40% in January. This survey revealed that 45 percent of Americans believe the court is too powerful, 15 percentage points more than January. 48% of the public said the court has the “right amount of power” and only 5% said the court does not have enough power.
“We are seeing a shift in a lot of different components of how Americans view the court,” says Kiley. “We see a growing share of Americans saying that the court has too much power. A growing share of Americans also say that they see the court as conservative.”
Pew found Americans’ favorability ratings of the Supreme Court is similar to what it was in 2015, when the high court issued another controversial landmark decision: Obergefell v. HodgesThe court granted same-sex couples the right of marriage. Pew revealed that 48% Americans thought the court was favorable in July 2015, 43% considered it to be unfavorable, and 61% said the same for Republicans. Today, the partisan division over Supreme Court is more pronounced.
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