A Washington Post-ABC poll has found that an overwhelming majority of Republicans support President Donald Trump filling the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead of waiting for the winner of the presidential election to forward a nominee next year with a new Senate.
According to The Washington Post, 80% of self-described Republicans want Trump to fill the Supreme Court seat with the current U.S. Senate, while only 16% want to wait for the winner of the 2020 presidential election to fill the court vacancy with the new Senate.
However, Republicans were also far more likely to indicate that they wanted the Supreme Court seat filled before next year than non-Republicans.
Roughly ⅓ of Independents told the pollster they wanted Trump to fill the seat before next year, and only 7% of Democrats felt the same way. Among U.S. adults, the breakdown was 38% in favor of filling the seat before next year, and 57% in favor of allowing the winner to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.
The poll was conducted between September 21-24, three days after the death of Justice Ginsburg was announced, and 1,008 adults were interviewed for it. Among the pool of respondents, 889 were registered to vote. The margin of error for the poll is 3.5%.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, a Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in the days before Ginsburg’s death found that a majority of respondents were in favor of holding Supreme Court hearings during an election year, including 71% of Independents, 68% of Republicans, and 64% of Democrats.
Trump is planning to announce Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 48, of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as his pick for the Supreme Court vacancy on Saturday, according to multiple media reports Friday afternoon.
The New York Times reports:
Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance. The president met with Judge Barrett at the White House this week and came away impressed with a jurist that leading conservatives told him would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice who died in 2016 and for whom Judge Barrett clerked.
As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans. But he is not known to have interviewed any other candidates for the post.
A large number of Republican senators have already come out in favor of the president forwarding a Supreme Court nominee, suggesting that it is feasible for Trump to successfully place a third justice on the court before the November election.
The other judge whose name was reportedly floated around for the vacancy was Judge Barbara Lagoa of the Eleventh Circuit. However, there are also ten other women on the president’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees, and the president said Wednesday that he didn’t have any plans to meet with Lagoa, according to Reuters.