Scott Powers
A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds a majority of Americans want the U.S. Senate to hold confirmation hearings this year on a Supreme Court appointee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Overall, 56 percent of those polled said they would support Senate hearings this year, while 38 percent preferred the course urged by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans: that any efforts to replace Scalia be put off for the next president. Six percent said they did not know.
The survey found at least pluralities in every demographic that Pew measured except among Republicans, who expressed a strong majority preference to seeing the Senate not consider any nominee from President Barack Obama.
Scalia died Feb. 13.
Pew Research Center is a nonprofit organization that reviews American issues and trends through public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. For this, Pew surveyed 1,002 adults on Thursday through Sunday, with half interviews on land line telephones and half on cellphones. The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International, with a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
Ten of the 38 percent who said they preferred a delay to the next administration then said they could change their mind, depending upon whom Obama nominates.
The partisan nature of the decision was clear in the Pew poll: 79 percent of Democrats said they wanted hearings this year, while 66 percent of Republicans said they want hearings postponed until next year. Independents nearly mirrored the overall result: 56 percent want hearings this year and 37 percent next year.
Broken out demographically, only two groups failed to show a true majority wishes for immediate hearings, but each favored this year to next year. White people favored this year by 50 percent to 44, just missing a majority, as 6 percent said they did not know. People whose educations ended with high school or before supported immediate hearings by 48 percent to 45.
Black people overwhelmingly favored immediate hearings 82 percent to 15.
Education was a clear divider on the matter. Among those people with post-graduate college education, 77 percent favored immediate hearings, while 18 percent preferred to wait. For college graduates, 60 percent wanted hearings this year to 36 percent opposed. Among those with some college education but no degree, 55 percent preferred this year, compared with 37 percent next year.
There were more mild differences of opinion when people were grouped based on age. Hearings this year got the most support among people ages 30 to 49, by 62 percent to 33 percent. The least amount of support for hearings this year came from people ages 50 to 64, with 51 percent supporting and 42 percent opposing.
On the other hand, a sizable group of people did not know much about Scalia, who was heralded for decades as the conservative leader of the Supreme Court. Nine percent of those surveyed thought he was a liberal, 11 percent thought he was a moderate, and only 55 percent thought he was a conservative. The other 25 percent said they did not know.
