Supreme Court loses favor of Republicans, despite its conservative makeup, new poll finds

• A new Marquette University Law School poll finds the court's approval rating fell among Republicans.
• The drop comes despite the addition by Donald Trump of 3 conservative justices.
• Amy Coney Barrett's addition changed the Supreme Court makeup to a 6-3 conservative majority.
• Expert: One possible explanation is GOP voters are frustrated the court hasn’t shifted enough to the right.

An odd thing has happened to public perceptions of the Supreme Court.

With three Donald Trump nominees, the court now has its most conservative makeup in years.

But perceptions of the court have grown worse — not better — among Republicans across the country.

A new national poll by the Marquette University Law School finds that the high court’s approval rating among GOP adults has dropped since last September from 80% to 57%. In that period, a conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, replaced a liberal one, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Meanwhile, the court’s approval ratings among Democrats (59%) and independents (61%) are virtually unchanged.

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A recent Gallup survey found a similar pattern: a drop in overall public approval of the court since last year — but driven more by shifts among Republicans than by shifts among Democrats.  

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“The striking change clearly is the drop in Republican approval,” coming despite a bigger conservative majority on the court, said Charles Franklin, who conducted the Marquette poll.

Why are Republicans less favorable toward a court with a 6-3 conservative majority than they were toward a court with 5-4 conservative majority?

One possible explanation is that GOP voters are frustrated that the court hasn’t shifted to the right as much as they would like, or that the court didn’t step into Trump’s effort to overturn the election, Franklin said.

A case of 'buyer's remorse' on the right?

The results come amid a debate over the court’s most recent term, which ended in July. In several high-profile cases, the justices delivered a conservative ruling but didn’t go as far as many predicted.

Some observers have chalked up the narrower-than-expected outcomes in those cases to Chief Justice John Roberts, an institutionalist who has tried to steer the court clear of political controversies and sudden reversals. Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett joined in that effort in a few of the recent cases decided by the court.

The slow-go approach has created a sense of “buyer’s remorse” among some on the right, said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston and a conservative legal blogger.

“When it comes to social issues, there’s a feeling they’re going to punch but then pull back at the last second,” Blackman said.

But the poll doesn’t address those possibilities directly. Franklin said one caveat about such explanations is that most members of the public don’t follow what the court does very closely.  

Franklin said another possibility is that the departure of Republican Trump and the power shift to Democratic control of the White House and Congress has soured Republicans more broadly on Washington institutions.  In other words, the drop in GOP approval of the court has less to do with anything the court has done than with changes in the political landscape. 

In fact, both Republicans and Democrats believe the court has shifted in a conservative direction since last year, the Marquette poll found. But Republicans were less aware than Democrats that GOP presidents have appointed a majority of the court’s members. 

Overall, 60% of adults approved of the court’s job and 39% disapproved. Last September, those ratings were more positive, with 66% approving and 33% disapproving. 

Progressives argue perceptions of the court have been skewed by media coverage that has overstated the importance of a handful of unanimous decisions. The court, they say, actually lurched to the right in the most recent term, severely weakening the 1965 Voting Rights Act, making it harder for unions to organize on private property and raising questions about the constitutionality of requiring the disclosure of campaign donors. 

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“What does it say about Republicans when they’re disappointed the court does not take away health care for millions of people?” asked Daniel Goldberg, legal director at the liberal Alliance For Justice.

“I hope that the court reporters and commentators would talk to the real people impacted by these horrific court decisions,” Goldberg said. “I think if you look at the end of term, the totality of what they did caused great harm to our democracy.” 

There were other wrinkles in the Marquette poll findings.

There is virtually no partisan gap in overall perceptions of the court, unlike the public’s very polarized views of the president and Congress:  57% of Republicans approve of the way the court is doing its job, as do 59% of Democrats and 61% of independents.

But there are big gaps in how Democrats and Republicans view most individual members of the court, how they view many recent court decisions, and how they view the idea of increasing the number of justices on the court (with most Republicans opposed and most Democrats in favor). 

The most polarizing justices are Trump appointees Kavanaugh and Barrett: Kavanaugh has a net favorability rating of minus 53 among Democrats and plus 54 among Republicans; Barrett has a net rating of minus 40 among Democrats and plus 53 among Republicans. (These net ratings are based on the difference between the share of people who have a favorable view of a justice and the share who have an unfavorable view).

There are smaller partisan gaps in how most of their colleagues on the court are perceived.

The striking exception to this partisan pattern is Roberts, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, who in recent years has received higher poll ratings from Democrats than Republicans after siding with liberal justices on some key decisions.

In the new Marquette poll, Roberts has a net rating of only plus 4 among Republicans, but plus 23 among Democrats.

Split views on recent court rulings

The poll found big differences in how Democrats and Republicans viewed some recent court rulings.

In the most-cited example of the justices pursuing a narrower outcome, a unanimous Supreme Court in June sided with a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia that declines to screen same-sex couples as potential parents. While the ruling was a loss for progressives, it was more narrow in its scope than conservatives had hoped. 

Nearly three in 10 respondents said they supported the decision compared with 19% who said they opposed it. More than half said they had not heard enough about the case to form an opinion. Republicans who voiced an opinion viewed it positively, Democrats negatively. 

In another case, a 7-2 majority tossed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act but did so in a surprisingly limited way: Rather than addressing the merits of the arguments about the law’s constitutionality, they said that the conservative states that sued did not have standing because they were not directly harmed.

It was the most closely followed case among those Marquette polled: 42% of respondents said they approved of the outcome compared with 18% who said they opposed it. Republicans viewed the ruling unfavorably: Democrats were overwhelmingly positive. 

But the gaps were smaller on other rulings, including a decision that sided with a former high school cheerleader who was kicked off the junior varsity squad for a vulgar social media post. Adults in both parties viewed the school First Amendment speech ruling favorably.

Pollster Franklin noted that public opinion about the court often comes with a big caveat: the public is not as knowledgeable or opinionated about the high court as it is toward the two parties and the partisan institutions they fight over, Congress and the White House.

That may be one reason that public ratings of the court are routinely more positive than ratings of Congress or the president. In the Marquette survey, the most knowledgeable adults were the most divided and the least positive toward the court.

Some of the biggest 2021 court cases were unfamiliar to most members of the public.   

And while about 60% of adults were able to rate the best known of the current nine justices, Kavanagh and Clarence Thomas, only a quarter were able to rate the least known, Stephen Breyer. Just 43% were able to rate Roberts.

The Marquette poll of 1,010 adults nationwide was conducted July 16-26, from an online panel of respondents who were recruited randomly. The polling sample was weighted to reflect the characteristics of the general population. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.