Sen. Jeff Flake is on to something with his call for quick confirmation of Merrick Garland should the Democratic nominee win the presidential election in November. The problem for Flake is that he thinks it should happen after the election, which might be just a little bit too late for the voting public, according to the latest from Public Policy Polling. PPP has followed up its Supreme Court polling in March, finding this month that even more voters believe President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, should get a vote this year. That number appears to be driven up by the threat of Donald Trump picking the next justice.
-Only 38% of voters nationally trust Donald Trump to nominate a Supreme Court justice, compared to 53% who don’t trust him to do that. Only 57% of voters even within his own party trust Trump to make a selection, and more than 80% of Democrats as well as a majority of independents don’t trust him with that responsibility. […]
-By a 58/37 spread, Americans want the Supreme Court seat to be filled this year. That’s actually up from 56/40 support for filling it this year on a national PPP poll in early March. The reason for the shift is that 39% of Republicans now think the seat should be filled immediately, up from just 26% two months ago. That seems to suggest the ascendance of Trump has changed the minds of many GOP voters across the country about continuing to obstruct the nomination of Merrick Garland.
More voters trust either President Obama (53/37) or Hillary Clinton (52/37) to pick the next justice over Trump, and that includes 29 percent of Republicans! A majority of Republicans—55 percent to 26—believe that Garland deserves hearings.
All of this is making Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's ongoing blockade more dangerous for Republican incumbents.
50% of voters say they’d be less likely to vote for a Senator who opposed having confirmation hearings, compared to only 18% who say that stance would make them more likely to vote for their Senator.
That includes 23 percent of independents, who say they are less likely to vote for a senator who's opposed having hearings.
Meanwhile, McConnell is flirting dangerously with a single-digit approval rating—he's down to 11 percent approval. But his blockade shows no sign of weakening, no matter how many Republicans he's going to take down with him.
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