The Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts are scheduled to start in less than a month, and senators from both sides of the aisle are clambering to learn more about Roberts before it's time to cast their votes. If Americans at large were responsible for deciding Roberts' fate, how would he fare? Although he's still a relative unknown, a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll* suggests he would pass Senate confirmation if the vote were taken today.
At this point, a slim majority of Americans, 51%, say they would like the Senate to confirm Roberts. Twenty-eight percent are opposed, and 21% do not have an opinion on the matter. Clearly, the Senate hearings next month will go a long way toward influencing public opinion on Roberts' confirmation.
Although a slight majority of Americans favor confirming Roberts, support for his confirmation has actually waned slightly since Gallup first asked about him in late July. At that time, 59% of Americans favored approval by the Senate, while 22% were opposed and 19% had no opinion.
Roberts -- a judge nominated by a Republican president -- enjoys strong support among Republicans. Three-fourths (73%) of Republicans would like to see the Senate vote in his favor, compared with 44% of independents, and little more than a third (35%) of Democrats.
Support among all party groups is lower now than immediately following his nomination. The late July poll found 82% of Republicans, 54% of independents, and 42% of Democrats wanting the Senate to vote in favor of Roberts serving on the Supreme Court.
Both polls find support for Roberts' confirmation significantly higher among older than younger Americans. Specifically, 59% of Americans aged 50 and older favor confirmation, compared with 45% of those under age 50. The gap is largely due to younger Americans' lower levels of familiarity with the issue, but even when taking this and party affiliation into account, older Americans show greater support for Roberts serving on the high court.
*These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,004 adults, aged 18 years and older, conducted Aug. 5-7, 2005. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
