About 40 percent of Americans said their senators’ vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will not have an impact on their voting decisions, according to a new American Barometer survey.
The poll, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 40 percent of respondents said their voting decision would not be impacted if their senator voted for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, while 28 percent said they would be more likely to vote for their senator if the senator voted to confirm the judge, and 32 percent said such a vote would make them less likely to vote for the senator.
Meanwhile, 39 percent said their decision would not be affected if their senator voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, compared to 34 percent of those polled who said they would be more likely to vote for their senator and 26 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for their senator.
“I agree with that poll. I think that a lot of people don’t have an opinion at this point, and it probably won’t influence their vote,” Karlyn Bowman, public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“This is a default response that we often see in questions like this before elections. There are a lot of things that people say are not going to affect their vote overall,” she continued.
The poll comes amid a tumultuous confirmation process for Kavanaugh, who is now facing two sexual assault allegations.
The New Yorker reported on Sunday that Senate Democrats were looking into a new allegation of sexual misconduct regarding Kavanaugh dating back to his freshman year at Yale University in the 1980s.
Deborah Ramirez, who also attended Yale, said Kavanaugh exposed himself in front of her during a gathering at the university. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.
The second allegation came roughly a week after Christine Blasey Ford Ford went public with allegations against Kavanaugh, claiming that he held her down on a bed and groped her during a high school party in 1982.
Ford and Kavanaugh are set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The American Barometer was conducted Sept. 21-22 among 1,000 registered voters by the HarrisX polling company. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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