- 61% of Americans say the
Supreme Court is motivated mainly bypolitics , aQuinnipiac poll found. - 67% of Democrats said so, while 62% of independents and 56% of Republicans agreed.
A new Quinnipiac
That's a 6-percentage point increase from two years ago, when the same polling firm found that 55% of respondents said they thought the court was driven by politics.
The court, which saw three justices nominated and confirmed by former President Donald Trump, now holds a 6-3 conservative majority. Even so, Republicans largely agree with their Democrats on the state of the court; 56% of Republicans said the court is driven mostly by politics. 62% of independent voters, for their part, said the same thing, and 67% of Democrats also said so.
In September, approval for the court reached an all-time low of 37%. And that was a 15-point drop from July 2020, when 52% of Americans said they approved of the way the court was handling its job.
That poll came in the wake of a controversial ruling on
As negative impressions of the court grow, some justices have sought to push back on the criticism in an attempt to restore faith in the institution.
The latest Trump appointee, Justice
Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, recently published a new book and gave several
The recent poll also comes amid a highly contentious term in which the justices will decide on a number of high-profile cases, including a challenge to the 1973 landmark decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide.
That case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, will be argued on December 1. A decision will come down by next June.
The Quinnipiac University poll, conducted from November 11 through 15, included 1,378 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.