33% Give Supreme Court Positive Ratings

While voters continue to give the U.S. Supreme Court’s job performance lukewarm reviews, they are a bit less likely to say the justices are too politically liberal.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 33% say the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job, with only three percent (3%) who give the high court an excellent grade. Nineteen percent (19%) give the Supreme Court a poor rating. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
 

Positive ratings for the high court are only slightly below results found in June, but are just three points above the all-time low of 30% measured in late March. The court's good/excellent ratings have generally run in the mid-to upper 30s in surveying since November 2006.

Now, 30% of voters believe the Supreme Court is too politically liberal, down just a point from June but the lowest finding since the question was first posed in July 2009. Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe the high court is too politically conservative, which ties the highest level in two years. Another 27% say the court’s ideology is about right, a finding that has ranged from 27% to 42%. Fifteen percent (15%) more are undecided.

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The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 20-21, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.