Supreme Court has highest approval in almost 10 years: Gallup

A majority of Americans currently approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing as the court has its highest level of public support in nearly a decade, according to a poll released Wednesday.

In a Gallup poll, 53 percent of Americans said they approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing, up from 49 percent in September of last year and the highest level the poll has recorded since 2009.

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The highest levels of support come among Republicans at 72 percent and independents at 52 percent, while fewer Democrats, 38 percent, currently approve of the court’s performance.

Support for the court among independents, in particular, has grown by 10 percent over two years, according to the poll.

Forty-nine percent of conservatives told Gallup that the court was either ideologically just right with 42 percent saying it is too liberal. Sixty-one percent of respondents who identified as liberals said the court is too conservative and just 26 percent of them say the current makeup of the court is acceptable.

The poll results come after a number of controversial rulings by the court, including a ruling in favor of President Trump’s ban on entry to the U.S. for citizens of five Muslim-majority countries.

The court, however, has also defied the Trump administration in recent months, refusing to hear a challenge from the Justice Department on a lower court ruling ordering the administration to continue to operate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) despite Trump ordering the program shuttered last year.

Gallup’s poll contacted 1,033 adults in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., between July 1-11. It carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.