Ed Morrissey:
It’s a pretty strong suggestion too, and it should give Democrat incumbents in the Senate yet another reason to question Harry Reid’s leadership. The Economist/YouGov partnership conducted two polls on approval levels for the Supreme Court. One was taken from June 28th-30th, ending the same day that the court handed down its Hobby Lobby decision (andHarris v Quinn for that matter), and after its previously-announced decisions the week before, and the other from July 5-7, at the pitch of the hysterical overreaction to the 5-4 Hobby Lobby result. While the media and Democrats seem to believe that the Supreme Court’s credibility would take a beating, the opposite turned out to be true:
In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, Americans are closely divided in how they view the Court, but there has been a slight improvement in the last week.
Although the Hobby Lobby decision was unpopular with Democrats, whose image of the Court shifted from mixed to negative after the ruling, Republicans (who were more positive about the Court to begin with) became even more positive. Favorable ratings of the Supreme Court jumped six points among Republicans, while unfavorable views rose seven points among Democrats.
But the greatest change in perception of the Supreme Court came from independents. Last week, independents were more unfavorable than favorable, this week, a majority of independents are favorable.
The change among independents turned out to be rather dramatic, actually:
That’s a sea change in opinion, and it’s not the only bad news for Democrats planning to make their opposition to the Hobby Lobby decision a centerpiece for the midterms. On the decision itself, a plurality of Americans favor the outcome by a 47/41 margin. Among independents, that goes to a 53/36 approval. Even among women, the target demo for this campaign strategy, the outcome is decidedly mixed at 43/46; the crosstabs show an almost even split among women who feel strongly either way, 32/34. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of this being part of the “war on women” Democrats keep claiming.
