Will Merrick Garland Get Confirmed? Majority Of US Residents Want Supreme Court Nominee To Get Hearing, New Poll Shows

While Senate Republican leaders remain adamantly opposed to voting on Merrick Garland's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, a new poll shows the majority of Americans disagree.

More than half, 53 percent, said the Senate should at least vote on Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, while more than seven in 10 think the refusal by Republicans to hold hearings is motivated by politics rather than what is best for the country, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll released Tuesday. The survey also showed that who sits on the Supreme Court is important, with about 68 percent saying it was at least “very important” to them.

About 75 percent of Democrats want a vote on Garland, the poll showed, while about two-thirds of Republicans said they didn’t want a vote. Democrats and the GOP have been fighting for weeks since the nomination of Garland, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, with many conservatives saying Obama shouldn’t nominate someone in his final year in office.

“I can't imagine that a Republican-majority Congress, in a lame-duck session, after the American people have spoken would want to confirm a nominee opposed by the NRA [National Rifle Association], the NFIB [National Federation of Independent Business] and that the New York Times says would move the court dramatically to the left,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said.

The poll was conducted by calling 1,252 adults on their cell phones and landlines March 17-20. Other polls, including one from the Washington Post and ABC News, also show that many Americans want Garland to get a hearing. A poll conducted early in March by the Wall Street Journal and NBC found that 48 percent of people in the U.S. want a vote this year on Garland.