Poll: Supreme Court faces lukewarm approval rating as justices grapple with Trump controversies

The Marquette Law School poll findings track closely with how Americans saw the high court last November. This time around, 60% said they disapprove of the court, effectively unchanged from the 59% that disapproved last year.

The latest iteration of the poll was conducted between February 5 and 15 – a period that saw the nine justices hear arguments in a high-stakes case concerning an effort by Colorado voters to kick Trump off that state’s ballot and the former president’s request for the court to intervene in his federal election subversion case.

Among Democrats, the latest numbers from Marquette are even more dismal, with just 27% saying they approve of the court and 73% saying they disapprove of it – a dramatic drop from the 60% approval and 39% disapproval rating the party reported in 2020. By comparison, 57% of Republicans said they approve and 43% said they disapprove this time around, a less steep but still notable dip from the 78% approval and 20% disapproval rating GOP respondents gave the court four years ago.

Among independents, 28% said they approve of the court, down from the 50% that approved of it in 2020. Seventy-two percent of independents disapprove of the court, according to the new poll.

The public’s view of the high court has generally worsened in recent years after a series of highly charged rulings – chief among them is the conservative majority’s 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade – and controversies over ethics and transparency among some of the justices.

The court is poised to issue rulings in the coming weeks and months in several politically fraught cases, including the one concerning Trump’s eligibility for Colorado’s ballot, a major Second Amendment controversy and the biggest abortion-related dispute to reach the justices since their decision overturning Roe.

Americans who’ve heard enough about the Colorado ballot case to have an opinion are evenly divided on it, according to the new Marquette poll.

In addition to the Colorado case, the US Supreme Court is separately considering a request from Trump last week to temporarily block a federal appeals court ruling rejecting his claims of presidential immunity in special counsel Jack Smith’s case against him in Washington, DC. The justices could eventually agree to consider his immunity arguments, which would place the court squarely in the middle of that case just months before the general election.

Results from the survey are based on interviews with 1,003 adults nationwide conducted using the SSRS Opinion Panel, and have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

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