Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination is historically unpopular

Support for President Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh, is lower than the support for failed 2005 justice nominee Harriet Miers and only slightly higher than the support for approving failed nominee Robert Bork, the last nominee to come up short in a Senate confirmation vote, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday. Including Bork, Kavanaugh is the only nominee whom a plurality of Americans don't want to see confirmed, the poll found.

The poll found that 37 percent of U.S. adults want the Senate to confirm Kavanaugh versus 40 percent who don't. Miers, whose nomination former President George W. Bush pulled amid an outcry from Republicans, had 44 percent of the public behind her and 36 percent opposed; Bork was supported by 31 percent of Americans but opposed by only 25 percent. The third failed nominee on CNN's list, Merrick Garland, drew support from 52 percent of adults and opposition from 33 percent; he never got a confirmation hearing or vote in 2016 because Republicans did not allow it.

There is a strong gender divide in the Kavanaugh numbers, possibly because he is widely seen as the key vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Only 28 percent of women want the Senate to confirm Kavanaugh, including 6 percent of Democratic women, 28 percent of independent women, and 71 percent of GOP women. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for Sept. 4, but Democrats say they are preparing to sue the National Archives for withheld records from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush White House. CNN's poll was conducted by SSRS Aug. 9-12 among 1,002 adults; it has a margin of sampling error of ±3.9 percentage points.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up