Matt Perez Forbes Staff
TOPLINE
A majority of United States adults think the winner of the November election between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden should decide who fills Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court vacancy, according to a new poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos and published on Sunday, a sentiment not shared by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and President Trump.
KEY FACTS
Surveying Americans on September 19 and 20 following Ginsburg’s death on September 18, the poll found that eight out of 10 Democrats and five out of 10 Republicans believe lawmakers should wait until after the election to nominate a successor to the Supreme Court.
Twenty-three percent of the people polled said an appointment shouldn’t wait for the election and the remainder of people said they were not sure.
With a mere 44 days remaining until the election, Trump has already committed to nominating a justice before the election, and McConnell has also already vowed to hold a vote.
McConnell infamously refused hearings for President Obama’s nominee to the court in 2016, Merrick Garland, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia around nine months outside the November election.
Trump has added two judges to the court during his first term, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, with a potential third judge creating a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.
The Senate has a 53-47 Republican majority, but two conservative senators, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), have already stated they’re against filling the seat before the election.
CHIEF CRITIC
Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) repeated McConnell’s words from 2016 verbatim. «The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.»
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” Ginsburg said to her granddaughter days before she died of complications from cancer. She was 87 years old.
KEY BACKGROUND
Trump told reporters on Saturday that his nominee would «most likely» be a woman, with the current frontrunner being 48-year-old Amy Coney Barret. She clerked for Justice Scalia and has expressed anti-abortion views in the past. Democrats are preparing for the possibility of the seat being filled before January 3, with Sen. Ed Marey (D-Mass.) tweeting that, «We must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court» if McConnell moved forward with a vote.
