Voters are more likely to back Senate candidates who oppose the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, according to a new Morning Consult and Politico poll released as the FBI conducts its week-limited investigation into the sexual misconduct claims against him.
Morning Consult surveyed 993 registed voters on Friday and Saturday, the two days following the highly watched testimony of Kavanaugh and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor in California who say Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were in high school in Maryland.
Voters are more likely to back a Senate candidate who opposes Kavanaugh’s confirmation, by a margin of 9 percentage points, 36 percent, over one who supports it, 27 percent.
And the Supreme Court seems to be a more important issue for Democrats right now than Republicans.
Fifty-seven percent of Democrats said they would be much less likely to support a candidate who backs Kavanaugh. That’s compared with only 42 percent of Republican voters who said they would be much more likely to back a Kavanaugh supporter.
The number of those surveyed who say the Senate should not confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court after the hearing last week is growing, according to this poll. Of those surveyed, 40 percent say the Senate should not vote to confirm him, compared to 37 percent who say he should be confirmed.
That number is up from last week, when 37 percent opposed his confirmation while 34 percent supported his confirmation.
Voters also perceive his accuser, Blasey Ford, more positively than Kavanaugh himself. Fifty-three percent of voters say they have a “more favorable” view of Ford following the Senate hearing. In comparison, 50 percent have a less favorable view of Kavanaugh after the hearings.
There is a sharp partisan divide concerning whether Ford’s allegations are true, with 38 percent who believe the accusations and 35 percent who don’t believe the claims.
Democrats (67 percent) and independents (34 percent) are most likely to believe the claim, while Republicans (72 percent) are more likely to believe the assault didn’t happen.
Forty percent of women believe Kavanaugh assaulted Ford, while 33 percent don’t believe the allegation, leaving voters split, 42 percent to 42 percent, on whether Kavanaugh’s nomination should be withdrawn
The survey was conducted online and the data was weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters based on age, race/ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, and region, according to Morning Consults. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
