Partisan Gap in Public Views on Supreme Court Hits Record Level

The gap between how Democrats and Republicans view the US Supreme Court is diverging more than ever, according to a new Gallup poll.

Only 11% of Democrats approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing compared to 75% of Republicans, the Gallup poll released Thursday found.

The 64-percentage-point gap is greater than the 55-point partisan gap in congressional approval or the previous largest 61-point margin for the Supreme Court after its 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

The poll was conducted between July 7 and July 21, soon after the Supreme Court concluded its most recent term in which President Donald Trump proved to be a clear winner.

The court’s conservative supermajority sided with Trump when it came to firing top government agency officials, discharging transgender people from the military, and opening hundreds of thousands of migrants to deportation.

The justices ended the term by declaring parents have the right to opt their children out of public-school lessons for religious reasons and upholding state bans on certain medical treatments for transgender children.

They also last month agreed to decide whether states can ban transgender girls and women from competing on female athletic school teams.

The Supreme Court’s approval rating was typically near 60% when Gallup began measuring it in the early 2000s. The rating has consistently been below 50% since 2021, as the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett provided the conservative bloc with a reliable 6-3 majority in its most controversial cases.

The latest 39% approval rating is the first time it’s dipped below 40%, although it’s hit the 40% mark several times between 2021 and 2023, a period when the conservative court has ruled against abortion and affirmative action.

Gallup conducted telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,002 adults, and the results have a margin of sampling error of +/- 4% at the 95% confidence level.