Supreme Court Update
Approval Ratings for Supreme Court Slip Following Health Care Ruling
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Public opinion of the Supreme Court has grown more negative since the highly publicized ruling on the president's health care law was released. A growing number now believe that the high court is too liberal and that justices pursue their own agenda rather than acting impartially.
A week ago , 36% said the court was doing a good or an excellent job. That’s down to 33% today. However, the big change is a rise in negative perceptions. Today, 28% say the Supreme Court is doing a poor job. That's up 11 points over the past week.
The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on Friday and Saturday following the court ruling, finds that 56% believe justices pursue their own political agenda rather than generally remain impartial. That’s up five points from a week ago. Just half as many -- 27% -- believe the justices remain impartial. (To see survey question wording, click here .)
Thirty-seven percent (37%) now believe the Supreme Court is too liberal, while 22% think it's too conservative. A week ago, public opinion was much more evenly divided: 32% said it was too liberal and 25% said too conservative.
In the latest survey, 31% now believe the balance is about right.
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 29-30, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC . See methodology .
As first noted in polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday , there has been a sizable partisan shift in perceptions of the high court.
A week ago, Republicans were generally positive about the court. Forty-two percent (42%) of GOP voters gave the justices good or excellent marks, while 14% said poor. Now, the numbers are strongly negative -- 20% say good or excellent and 43% say poor.
Among Democrats, the numbers went from mixed to very positive. A week ago, 35% of those in the president's party gave the high court positive reviews and 22% offered a negative assessment. Now, 50% are positive and only 11% give the high court negative marks.
As for those not affiliated with either major party, the positives remained unchanged at 31%. However, among unaffiliated voters, the number rating the court's performance as poor doubled from 14% a week ago to 30% today.
Among Political Class voters, positive ratings for the Supreme Court soared to 55%, compared to 27% a week ago.
Among Mainstream voters, the court's ratings headed in the opposite direction. A week ago, 34% of Mainstream voters said the court was doing a good or excellent job and 17% gave it poor ratings. The numbers have now reversed -- 22% positive and 36% negative.
Democrats are now fairly evenly divided as to whether justices pursue their own agenda or remain impartial. However, by lopsided margins, Republicans and unaffiliated voters believe that they pursue their own agenda.
In March , just before oral arguments on the health care law, only 28% gave the high court such positive ratings. Those were the lowest ratings ever earned by the court in more than eight years of polling by Rasmussen Reports. But those oral arguments convinced many that the president's health care law might be overturned, and positive ratings for the court jumped 13 points to 41%.
In his weekly syndicated newspaper column, Scott Rasmussen contends that the Supreme Court ruling keeps the health care law on life support . "But it's important to remember that the law has already lost in the court of public opinion," he writes. "The Supreme Court ruling is a temporary reprieve more than anything else."
Most voters had wanted the court to overturn the health care law and uphold the Arizona immigration law . The court ruled in the opposite way on both issues. Most voters continue to favor repeal of the president's health care law .