I wonder if they did polling on SCOTUS approval rating. Can’t imagine the SCOTUS at the time was as unpopular as this one.
Polling wasn’t scientific at that time, and tended to vastly overrepresent the views of the wealthy. Just ask President Dewey.
DTS makes a good point that SCOTUS’ approval rating is currently around 35%, and you can bet your ass that not one of those 35% is a potential Democratic voter. Traditionally the Court has been viewed as a neutral institution standing above partisan politics, but that ship has long sailed. Biden shouldn’t be afraid of attacking a group that 65% of the public dislikes.
A lot of people on here thought Elizabeth Warren was very much “fit to be President”. She, along with colleagues including Adam Schiff and Ed Markey, is currently cosponsoring legislation to expand the Court to 13 seats. Here’s her explanation of why. This would actually return us to the ratio originally set by the Founding Fathers, which was one seat per Federal District Court. Surely Justice Thomas would approve!
Thought experiment: I know we’re in a bubble here, but for all the people saying this would be political suicide for Biden: Would YOU vote Republican in protest if Biden came out for expanding the Court? Do you personally know anyone who regularly votes Democratic, but would switch parties over this issue? Or are we still cowering in fear of imaginary “moderate swing voters”?
You’re thinking of the Literary Digest poll. Gallup annihilated the older methods of polling, replacing them with state of the art survey methods. Wiki: From 1936 to 2008, Gallup Polls correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election with the notable exceptions of 1948 and 1976.
Look at the graph I posted. That tracks extremely closely to everything we know about Roosevelt’s popularity. Or that I know, since I’ve read enough about Roosevelt to make that judgement.
I know about the advances made when Democrats held the Presidency and both houses. I also know that the Republicans have done their best to destroy those advances and move the country back a century every time they’ve had power.
Liz Warren wrote in your link:
Some oppose the idea of court expansion. They have argued that expansion is “court-packing,” that it would start a never-ending cycle of adding justices to the bench, and that it would undermine the court’s integrity.
They are wrong.
No, she is wrong.
Not that it matters. We can burble on the internet about an increase in the court’s size, but it’s not going to happen, at least under Democrats. We live in a world where the debt ceiling can’t pass.
IIRC Nate Silver says it isn’t until the mid-Fifties that polling became reasonably reliable. And given that 1948 was the only close Presidential election between 1936 and 1960, that’s not really an impressive record for Gallup.
Imaginary? According to Gallup, only 27% of Americans consider themselves Democrats. Only 30% consider themselves Republicans. Independents (those imaginary swing voters) make up 41% of the public.
In March, Gallup found the Dems at 25%, Republicans at 25%, and independents at 49%.
Of those independents, Republicans currently have an 8 point lead when they are asked who they would vote for today.
The date stamp on that page is wrong. It has data to 2023.
C’mon, dude, this is poli sci 101 stuff. Most self-identified independents always vote for one party or the other. Most self-identified moderates aren’t moderates, if we define that as “holding positions approximately halfway between the median Republican and Democratic positions. The only people who actually might vote for either party are low-information morons whose actions are too unpredictable to make it possible to target a campaign message to.
It’s true that the Presidential election usually goes to the winner of the independent voters, but it’s certainly not true that 45% of votes are legitimately up for grabs.
I gave the end date as 2008. Cutting it back to 1960 can’t be a mere typo. Looks more like a way to squirm out of a totally losing argument.
Not fudging the data is something you should learn in high school, if not earlier.
“Consider themselves” seems the operative phrase here. Self-reporting that you think you are fair and balanced and in the political middle does not make it so.
I’d be interested in seeing the voting records of all those self-proclaimed independents and see if they reliably vote one way or another.
My experience, anecdotal as it is, tells me few people I meet are actually “independent” when it comes to politics. Indeed, the polarization of Americans on political issues seems to only have gained strength in the last 20 years.
Well, chief justice John Roberts says there is no problem. They did some soul searching and decided all is well apparently.
If anything should alarm us and want to pack the court it is the utter inability for the justices to be aware of what is happening. Ivory tower leaps to mind.
Are you actually that lacking in basic reading comprehension, or are you just pretending to be in order to weasel out of your lost argument?
Let me try to explain it to you in short and simple words: I said polls were bad before mid-fifties, then OK. Polls after 1960 being good has nothing to do with my claim.
Now go run along, the grownups would like to talk among themselves.
To expand on my point about “independents”, let’s consider the best known independents in recent political history. There’s Senators Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Sinema. Former Maine governor and right-wing populist Angus King. Former libertarian-leaning Rep. Justin Amash and 2016 conservative Christian Presidential candidate Evan MacMillan, both of whom left the GOP in protest of Trump’s nomination.
Sure, if you could find a candidate who would appeal to all of those people’s supporters, you’d be in great shape to win an election. But you can’t, because “independents” aren’t a monolithic group, and many of them are nowhere near the political center.
Warning for @Thing.Fish, your post crosses the line into insulting another poster outside the Pit.
You attacked the poster and not the post.
Modnote: And this is pushing things a bit. Please don’t accuse posters of lying.