Support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court among Republican women has dropped 11 points since last week, following additional allegations of sexual misconduct against him, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll released Wednesday.
Just under half of GOP women polled, 49 percent, said Kavanaugh should be confirmed, compared with 60 percent the previous week.
{mosads}While Kavanaugh’s support among Republican voters remains strong, overall it has dropped 11 points, with 58 percent supporting his confirmation and 14 percent opposing it.
The most recent poll was conducted after Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh tried to rape her and Deborah Ramirez accused him of exposing himself to her, but before Kavanaugh appeared on Fox News to defend himself against those accusations and Julie Swetnick went public with a third series of allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh in high school.
The fresh allegations have injected a new level of uncertainty into Kavanaugh’s already tenuous path to confirmation. All 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee released a letter Wednesday saying his nomination should be withdrawn. The accusations also further risk the swing votes of Republican senators whose support is needed in a full Senate vote, such as Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.).
The drop in public support for Kavanaugh mirrored that for President Trump, who saw his support among Republican women drop 19 points and his support among Republicans overall fall 16 points since the previous week’s poll.
He now has the support of 68 percent of Republican women, with 26 percent disapproving of his job performance, and the support of 72 percent of overall GOP voters, with 23 percent disapproving of his job performance in the poll.
Trump initially adopted a reserved tone regarding the allegations against Kavanaugh, but has defended his nominee over the past few days.
“The Democrats are playing a high level CON GAME in their vicious effort to destroy a fine person. It is called the politics of destruction. Behind the scene the Dems are laughing. Pray for Brett Kavanaugh and his family!” he tweeted Tuesday.
The poll surveyed 1,966 registered voters from Sept. 20-23. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points overall, and 4 percentage points among GOP voters.
Updated at 7:49 p.m.