Poll: 57 percent of Americans think next president, Senate should fill Ginsburg vacancy

A majority of Americans in a new poll say the next president should fill the Supreme Court vacancy left after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg’s death has set off a partisan battle as President Trump plans to fill the new vacancy swiftly during an election year. 

Fifty-seven percent of adults surveyed in an ABC News-Washington Post poll released Friday said that the winner of the November presidential election should choose Ginsburg’s successor, while 38 percent said they would like to see Trump and the current Senate move forward with plans to confirm a new justice. 

The results are sharply split along partisan lines, with 90 percent of Democrats saying they want the next president and Senate to choose the next justice and 80 percent of Republicans saying they want Trump and the current Senate to fill the seat.

Sixty-one percent of independents say they want the winner of the election to pick the next justice. 

Overall, 50 percent of adults in the poll said they trust Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden more to handle the issue, while 42 percent say they trust Trump more.

The Supreme Court fight also appears to be energizing Biden’s base in the final sprint to Election Day, with 64 percent of his backers in the survey saying the issue makes it more important to them that he wins. Only 37 percent of Trump supporters say the same of the president. 

The poll comes as Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), plow ahead with plans to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court pick. The president has said he will announce his nominee to replace Ginsburg on Saturday. 

Senate Democrats have issued a flood of rebukes against their GOP colleagues, accusing them of hypocrisy after they blocked a Supreme Court nominee picked by former President Obama from getting a confirmation hearing in 2016, the last presidential election year.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has also said the winner of the election should pick the next justice.

 “Let me be clear that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” the former vice president said last week.  

But McConnell appears to have already locked down the number of votes he needs to push a nominee over the 50-vote threshold. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), are the only two who have voiced opposition to the vote.

The partisan brawl has led to a flood of calls from Democratic activists, as well as some lawmakers, for the party to add justices to the Supreme Court in the next Congress if it takes control of the Senate.

Doing so would require abolishing the 60-vote filibuster for legislation, a controversial move that does not have unanimous support among Democratic senators.

The prospect of packing the court remains unpopular with Americans, according to Friday’s poll, with 54 percent of respondents saying they oppose adding justices, while 32 percent support expanding the Supreme Court.

The ABC News-Washington Post poll surveyed 1,008 adults from Sept. 21-24 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.