A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll reveals that in the wake of Antonin Scalia’s death voters are deeply at odds — mostly along party lines — over whether the Senate should confirm a new Supreme Court justice now or wait until the new president is sworn in next year.
It appears that each of the parties’ constituencies agree with their party’s approach: 81 percent of Democrats believe that the Senate should vote to appoint someone this year; 81 percent of Republicans feel that the Senate should push off a vote until next year when a new president is elected.
Overall, 43 percent of those polled agree that the president should nominate and the Senate should approve someone this year and 42 percent believed the process should be delayed until after the election. Independents split exactly the same way as the overall survey: 43 percent favor this year; 42 percent favor next year.
The poll of 800 registered voters was conducted Feb. 14-16, in the days immediately following Scalia’s death. The margin of error for the survey was 3.5 percentage points.
