Who should pick RBG’s Supreme Court replacement? Here’s what Americans say in new poll
After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg left a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, most Americans are in favor of waiting for a replacement, a new poll conducted after the justice’s death finds.
Sixty-two percent of Americans say they think the winner of November’s presidential election should choose the person to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Sunday.
Meanwhile, 24% were not in favor of the person who prevails on Election Day picking the Supreme Court replacement, while 15% said they didn’t know, findings show.
Responses were divided along political party lines, with 84% of Democrats in favor of a selection made after the 2020 general election. About 49% of Republicans gave the same response. Forty-two percent of independents said the winner in November should choose the next justice, with 21% disagreeing.
The high court on Friday announced Ginsburg died from cancer at age 87. She had held her seat since 1993 after being nominated by then-President Bill Clinton, which made her the second-only woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court at the time, McClatchy News previously reported.
The open seat creates the potential to solidify a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which has lifetime appointments, for years to come. Following the death of Ginsburg, a member of the court’s more liberal wing, the Supreme Court currently sits at a 5-3 conservative majority. President Donald Trump, a Republican, said he would reveal his nominee this week and urged the U.S. Senate to take a vote on his possible pick before the election, Fox News reported Monday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed support for quickly moving forward with Trump’s new pick, drawing criticism from Democrats after he blocked President Barack Obama from appointing Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat in 2016.
At the time, McConnell said Scalia’s death, which happened Feb. 2016, was too close to an election and that voters should decide who fills the seat, leaving a vacancy for ten months under Obama. “Given that we are in the midst of the presidential election process, we believe that the American people should seize the opportunity to weigh in on whom they trust to nominate the next person for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court,” the Republican majority leader and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in The Washington Post.
But now, less than two months from Election Day, McConnell is saying that rule doesn’t apply this year because both the White House and Senate are controlled by the same party.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Friday said the decision should be left to whoever voters choose on Election Day.
“Tonight, and in the coming days, we should focus on the loss of the justice and her enduring legacy,” the campaign said in a statement. “But there is no doubt, let me be clear, that the voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider.”
To come up with the poll results, organizers say they surveyed 1,006 adults from Sept. 19 to Sept. 20. Participants were randomly selected from an Ipsos online panel, the market research company says.
“It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of plus or minus 4 percentage points,” Reuters reported.
This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 10:27 AM with the headline "Who should pick RBG’s Supreme Court replacement? Here’s what Americans say in new poll."
