NEW POLLING SHOWS VOTERS BELIEVE EXPANDING SUPREME COURT WOULD STRENGTHEN DEMOCRACY
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (April 22, 2022) — Today, Take Back the Court Action Fund released a memo laying out evidence of growing support for expanding the Supreme Court. According to recent polls, most registered voters believe that expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court would strengthen democracy.
“With each new bad decision, the rigged right-wing Supreme Court reminds the American public of its true intentions: serving a rich and powerful few and pushing a backwards, partisan right-wing agenda,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of Take Back the Court Action Fund. “Americans are watching the Court strip away their rights with impunity, and they’re ready to stop it. It’s no surprise that momentum behind adding new seats to the Court and restoring integrity to the judiciary is quickly growing.”
The numbers come amid record lows in public trust in the Court as Americans see the institution as increasingly motivated by politics, and not upholding the Constitution.
Please see the memo and key takeaways from the polling below.
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Take Back the Court Action Fund
DATE: April 22, 2022
RE: Recent Polling Shows Support for Supreme Court Expansion — And Potential for Growth
A new poll released last week shows most registered voters believe that increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court would strengthen democracy — and several other polls conducted this year demonstrate public dissatisfaction with the Court, as well as room for growth in support for expansion as the public learns more about the Republican Party’s 50-year domination of the Court.
A new poll conducted by Hart Research for The New Republic in March and released last week shows a majority (52 percent) of registered voters believe that increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court would strengthen democracy — including large majorities of the voters in several key voting groups:
67 percent of those aged 18-34 and 58 percent of those 35-49
69 percent of Black voters and 60 percent of Hispanic voters
72 percent of Democrats, including 74 percent of Democrats 18-49 and 70 percent of Democrats 50 or older
71 percent of Biden voters
83 percent of liberals and 54 percent of moderates
84 percent of liberal Democrats and 58 percent of moderate/conservative Democrats
In all four geographic regions of the country (Northeast, South, Midwest, West) at least 50 percent of Americans agree increasing the number of justices would strengthen democracy. Even in states won by Donald Trump in 2020, 48 percent of voters agree, as do 52 percent of white women, 48 percent of suburban residents, and 46 percent of those who live in small towns and rural areas.
This new poll is just the latest evidence that the American people have serious concerns about the Supreme Court, and are open to rebalancing the Court to restore its legitimacy and strengthen democracy.
Late last year, Gallup found public approval of the Supreme Court at an all-time low (40%) and disapproval at an all-time high (53%), with more Americans saying the court is too conservative than too liberal by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and an Annenberg survey found record-high support for restricting the court from ruling on certain topics and issues — and even for abolishing the court altogether.
A January 2022 Pew poll found 84 percent of Americans think Supreme Court justices shouldn’t decide cases based on their own political views — but only 16 percent of these Americans think the justices actually do an excellent or good job of keeping their own views out of their decisions.
In March of this year, a Monmouth University poll found only 42 percent of Americans approve of the job the Court is doing. The Monmouth poll also found 69 percent think it is important for the “Supreme Court to look like the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the country as a whole.”
Also in March, a poll sponsored by C-Span found 84 percent of likely voters agree that “Decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court have an impact on my everyday life as a citizen,” with a majority of Democrats strongly agreeing. Sixty-nine percent of likely voters — including 67 percent of independents — said it is important to have “a diverse U.S. Supreme Court as it relates to gender and/or ethnicity, for example, having justices who are women, or Black, Hispanic, or Asian.” Only 37 percent think “recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions demonstrate that the U.S. Supreme Court acts in a serious and constitutionally sound manner,” while 46 percent think “recent decisions demonstrate that the Supreme Court justices split into parties, similar to Republicans and Democrats in Congress.”
Two Marquette University polls conducted this year demonstrate room for growth in support for reforms like Court expansion as the public — and particularly Democrats and moderates — learn more about the Court’s actions and the Republican Party’s dominance of the Court.
In a January poll, Marquette found that nearly a quarter of Americans — including 33 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats — incorrectly think a majority of the Supreme Court was appointed by Democratic presidents. Only a quarter of women, 16 percent of Americans 18-29, 22 percent of independents, and 40 percent of Democrats were confident that a majority of the Court was appointed by Republican presidents. In fact, not only have Republican presidents appointed a 6-3 supermajority of the current Supreme Court, the Court’s majority has been made up of Republican appointees for more than 50 consecutive years — and less than a third of Americans had even been born yet the last time the Court’s majority was appointed by Democratic presidents.
And despite the fact that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has repeatedly gutted the Voting Rights Act over the last decade, a March Marquette poll found that only 25 percent of Americans know the the Court has reduced voting rights of racial and ethnic minorities over the past 15 years — and more than a third (36 percent) incorrectly think the Court has increased voting rights. By a two-to-one margin (41-20) more young people incorrectly think the Court has increased voting rights.
Public education about the Republican Party’s dominance of the Supreme Court and about the Court’s actions therefore has potential to increase support for Court expansion among Democrats and moderates — and to increase intensity of support among those who already support expansion.